Season of Grace
by Lirillith
Summary: FF6 A midwinter visit to Nikeah, trying to celebrate an old holiday in the World of Ruin, provides a brief lull in the struggle against Kefka. And for several members of the party, it's a chance, welcome or not, to face the past or the future.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: This fic owes a major debt to Vienna Teng's "The Atheist Christmas Carol," and to my own fixation on snow (comes of a childhood deprived of it.) It jumps around a bit in time, but I hope the chronology makes some kind of sense. And while this isn't exactly a pairing fic, those of you who are deeply wedded to the idea of Locke/Celes will, as usual, not like me much.

Season of Grace

Chapter One

Aside from a trace of accent that, judiciously applied, had once had an intoxicating effect on the socialites of Vector, Setzer had taken little from his childhood in Jidoor except a lifelong intolerance for weather of all kinds. There were times when he attributed to his birthplace his taste in wines, in art, in opera, in tall, lovely blonde women; but in truth, all except possibly the last had been acquired much later in life, and none had much to do with setting, he felt. What Jidoor had stamped in his malleable young heart had been a succession of mild winters, sultry summers, cool sea breezes and golden sunlight all year long.

So it was under duress that, days before a festival never celebrated in either of the places he'd most often called home, he steered the Falcon down through enormous piles of cloud, through biting wind and flecks of snow, to land in a field west of Nikeah around midday.

"I _always_ wanted a white Midwinter when I was a kid," Sabin said happily. The big man was swaddled in a coat, gloves, knit hat, the ensemble contriving to create the impression of the world's largest seven-year-old. Setzer had seen children bundled up like that for sledding in the hills outside Vector.

"Childhood must have been a series of painful disappointments," Setzer replied, drily, as he cut the heat to the balloon.

"Yeah, but that wasn't one of them," Sabin said, and Setzer grinned at the retort despite his ill-humor and the chill seeping through his own gloves. He wondered if all of Sabin's fuzzy knitted things were more effective than his own leather items. "Royalty, remember? Dad took us out to a hunting lodge in the mountains one time when we were about twelve. Nearly broke our necks sledding."

"Must have been pleasant," Setzer replied, absently, as he steered the descending ship towards the fallow field he'd had in mind. That was the handy thing about northern climes – winter crops were scarce or, lately, non-existent. Around Jidoor even now much of the land was covered in vineyards and groves, though they weren't thriving, and he had to land much further outside the city than he found altogether convenient.

There was no reply from the crown prince of Figaro, and Setzer gratefully focused his attention on the landing until they'd settled, with an orchestra of creaking, hissing and grinding, into the field. The group had grown more or less used to the noise by now; when they'd first begun coming on board, one after another of them had emerged from belowdecks shaking and variously angry or queasy with fear. He didn't have the faintest clue why they thought it sounded like a crash; if they feared flight itself that might make more sense, but why landing should trouble them remained a mystery.

"Do you know where your brother is?" he asked.

"On his way," Sabin replied, and Setzer turned to watch the king emerge from the hatch on the deck.

"It may be an overnight stay," Edgar said. "I'll be taking rooms in town for part of the day anyway, if only for a place to have our purchases sent. You know we're getting in another order of shoes for Mobliz, and I'm buying clothes, blankets and the like, though don't mention that to Terra. I want to surprise her."

"You'll be sending things back throughout the afternoon, then?"

"Probably. We'll be bringing smaller items ourselves. Terra and I will be going into town, Locke, Strago... Sabin, were you and Cyan coming with us?"

"Go on ahead of us," Sabin said. "Getting Gau ready is going to be interesting. I should go down there and see if they need help."

"Help?" Edgar asked, sounding amused.

"Well, you know Gau, he doesn't seem to like clothes much..."

"If only beautiful women the world over would pick up his aversion," Edgar said.

"Maybe he simply doesn't feel the cold," Setzer suggested.

"I dunno, the Veldt was pretty warm. You wouldn't think he'd be used to cold." Sabin turned to go, then turned back. "Are you planning to get rooms at the Blue Lion again?"

"That's the plan," Edgar said, and Sabin turned to go.

"Quite a mob," Setzer said, turning to Edgar. "Was anyone else invited?"

"I believe Strago's hoping to surprise Relm with something. He got Celes to sit for a portrait to keep her distracted while he makes his escape. Umaro's already taken off for the woods; he's in his element, and I believe Mog's with him. Shadow just looked at me when Terra mentioned the holiday. Then he stopped. I told her that was a fairly clear hint."

* * *

Sabin climbed down the ladder leading belowdecks, then nearly barreled into Strago, waiting his turn to climb up. "Hey, sorry. You all right?"

"I think I'll pull through," Strago said, grinning. "I'm not as old as I used to be."

"That's... good to know," Sabin replied, unsure if the old man were playing with words just for the hell of it or if he actually meant he felt more vigorous than he once had. "Still, you think you need help with the ladder?"

"You could hand me up my stick once I'm up. When I put it over my back it snags on things."

"Got it," Sabin said, and waited, holding the cane and trying not to be obvious about fidgeting, as the mage made his slow way up the ladder. If Sabin feared one thing about growing old, it was having to move slowly.

"All clear," Strago called down, with what Sabin thought sounded like amusement. He held the cane up, stretching a bit so Strago could reach it easily. That done, he set off around the catwalk to Cyan's room. No one answered at his knock, so he glanced over the railing of the catwalk. Celes was standing in the middle of the room, her hands on the hilt of a sword, the tip of the scabbard resting on the ground. Relm was sitting in front of an easel, and Sabin could see Locke, legs and an arm that must be Terra's, and no one else. Shadow, as usual, lurked above, near the railing but leaning against the wall, reading something; Sabin waved at him, not really expecting a response, and then took off down the spiral staircase to the big common area.

Locke looked up at his approach. "Terra, we need to take off."

Relm snorted. "Yeah, you guys have fun shopping for _shoes_ and _food,_" she said, with infinite disdain. Sabin remembered why he hadn't liked twelve-year-old girls even when he was a twelve-year-old boy.

"It's nice being able to do things for the kids," Terra said mildly, as she stood up, gathering her coat and gloves. Sabin moved away from the staircase to let them pass, and glanced around. Cyan was nowhere to be found, but Gau was crouched on the arm of an overstuffed chair, wearing his strangely beloved, ratty-looking furs over a sweater Celes had bought for him when they were trying to get him spiffed up to meet with his father, and a pair of soft wool trousers.

"Hey, Gau, you got dressed!"

"_Cold_ outside," Gau said, and Sabin remembered the kid was bright; just because he couldn't put all the right parts in a sentence didn't mean he couldn't manage the cause and effect between being half-naked and feeling chilly.

"Yeah, but it'll be worth it to go to town. You like shiny things, right?"

Gau cocked his head. "How shiny?"

"Blinding. You know where Cyan went?"

"Big room."

"This is the big room."

"_Other_ big room."

"Okay..."

"The gymnasium," Celes offered.

"Oh, right! Sorry, Gau, I should have guessed. Thanks, Celes." He headed back upstairs, for the large, empty room that was not in fact equipped as a gymnasium. Since no one had claimed it as a cabin, it had been adopted as a training room by those who felt such a thing was useful. Sabin used it daily, Cyan almost as frequently. When they flew low or landed, they kept a window open, so when Sabin opened the door he was hit by a blast of cold air and the smell of sweat.

"Damn, Cyan, didn't you remember we were going into town?"

The knight lowered the wooden sword he'd been drilling with and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I had not intended to accompany thee," he said.

"Well, you could have said something instead of just making yourself stink. C'mon, get cleaned up! We need to get Gau a present, and it'll take two if we're going to surprise him."

"Are there no others available?"

"But Gau _likes_ you. Come on, Cyan, pleeease?" Hadn't he used that tone on his mother back in the day? "It'll make him so happy!"

"I half believe thou art more excited than the boy."

"Um, well, look over there! Shiny thing!"

Cyan didn't buy it, but Sabin hadn't really been trying. "Sir Sabin..."

"Of course I'm excited too, I love Midwinter. So come on, you agreed to it. Go get cleaned up."

"If you insist, your highness."

Sabin made a face. "Don't be like that." Silence, from the knight. Surely he'd come around, though. "I'll get someone to put water in your room." He turned away, taking off in search of one of the servants Setzer had hired. Behind him, Cyan sighed and returned the sword to the rack, next to a lonely other of its kind; both, along with the rack, retrieved from his quarters in Doma.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Above, Terra stood with gloved hands deep in the pockets of the coat she'd had ever since she could remember, the coat Locke bought for her secondhand the snowy day they met. It had a hood, it was warm, it had been mended over and over both before and since she'd gotten it, but mostly, it was the first thing anyone had ever given her. The others were talking about how to get to town, whether it looked like snow, should they try to buy or borrow a cart from a nearby farmer or just set off on foot, but Terra was thinking of gifts, and home.

She needed to find gifts for the kids; not just necessities like shoes and coats, but toys, maybe some books. There'd be a bit left over for those after she spent everything else on the coats and shoes. She had a sheaf of papers folded up in her pocket where they'd all traced their stocking feet onto paper, for size, and notes on each about arm and shoulder and torso measurements. She hoped that was enough to get things that fit.

This holiday was supposed to be about gifts, though; she'd been wanting new coats and shoes for the kids before she ever thought of Solstice celebrations. While the last one they'd spent, just a few months after she'd come to Mobliz, had been stark, Duane and Katarin had done their best to make it a special day for the kids; she'd tried to help, but had no sense of the customs and the importance of it for them. They'd gone hunting so they could be sure to have meat, and they'd used some of their precious hoard of spices to make sure the food was tasty rather than simply edible. Katarin had broken into some of the stores that had stayed locked and whole to look for things to give as gifts, and had made others. _It's not so much the gift itself as waiting for it and then getting it,_ Katarin had said. _And having something to look forward to._ She wanted them to have nice things to look forward to this year, now that she'd seen how happy they were to get dolls made of yarn, smoke-stained picture books, and chipped, sun-faded toy soldiers.

Maybe it wasn't actually _about_ the gifts. She'd heard Duane and Katarin talking about the sun, about reverence and prayer and lighting candles (Katarin was in favor of all those things, Duane slightly scornful when they spoke of it but very determined about finding some decent candles in one of the ruined stores, and solemn ) and Isabella had spoken of going to chapel with her parents at dawn, when they were alive, but _everyone_ had been interested in the presents, and they'd been so happy.

She was trying to think of that, because she didn't want to think of the other thing. She'd been climbing the ladder up to the deck when she heard Strago saying in a loud whisper, "Don't you think you should tell her, Edgar? She deserves—" and then falling silent as her head came through the hatch. There had been other things, and they were starting to add up. There had been long conversations about the way that magic hadn't seemed to work quite right at first, right after the world broke. Espers seemed sluggish, unresponsive, their glow dimmed, and spells seemed less powerful. _It might just be us,_ she'd suggested. The confusion of her own emotions had sapped her strength, both magical and mundane, along with her will to fight. There'd been agreement, but inconclusive agreement.

There'd been endless rehashing of what had happened on the Floating Continent – Kefka pushing the statues out of alignment, then being pinned between them. About the power he had now, the conviction everyone from ordinary townsfolk to his followers in the tower had that he was the source of destruction, and about the source of that power. The conviction seemed to be that either he controlled the statues or had taken their power directly to himself. The source of all magic was either in his hands or under his control; everything they were using to heal burns and speed their own swordarms was stolen from him. She thought they had to be like mice nibbling at the edges of his power. He scared her; he'd always, always scared her, from the first time she saw him laughing at the gates of Figaro Castle as the flames caught at the wood. The fear had been intense, unreasoning, and she only realized much later that it had to be based on the past she'd lost, or the few fragments she hadn't. _My sweet little magic user._

Magic was under his control. Espers lived by it. And Terra was part Esper. She didn't know exactly what Strago thought, but she could hazard a guess.

"Terra?"

"Hm?" It'd been Setzer's voice.

"Is something wrong? You seem preoccupied."

Locke looked her way, and Edgar. She looked down. "I was just... thinking. I... Strago, am I going to die?"

"_What?_" Locke demanded, and Edgar said "We can't be certain of anything," but Strago didn't answer right away, and Terra didn't look away from him.

"I am, aren't I?"

"Edgar's right, we can't be certain. But in theory, it doesn't look good."

"Half of your theory is based on fairy tales, isn't it?" Setzer, lounging against the ship's controls, hands in his pockets.

"How many of those old stories turned out to be true? How many of them have we fought?" He turned back to Terra. "Espers had some flesh on 'em – enough to seem solid, enough to get children on a human, apparently." He chuckled, but no one else did, and he continued. "But most of their being is magic. That's why there's never a corpse when an Esper dies. There's no way of telling how deeply magic runs in you, my girl, but you can change shape, and even as a human, you look—" he gestured, and Terra ducked her head, loose hanks of jade-green hair that had escaped the ponytail falling around her face. "There's no knowing for sure, but there's a risk. I thought you should know." He thumped his cane on the deck, cleared his throat. "I didn't mean you to overhear. Wanted to break it to you differently."

"It's okay," she said. "We have to stop Kefka. That's the only important thing. I guess it's good to know, though." She felt empty; not scared, not worried or angry or upset, just strangely blank.

"That's _it?_ 'I'm going to die but it's okay'?" Locke sounded angry enough for both of them. "You couldn't have mentioned this any sooner, Strago? Gods! Were you planning to bring this up at all? _Ever?_"

"Locke, leave him alone," Edgar said before the old man could answer. "It's not like he's plotting her death; he saw the possibility, he thought to bring it up. It's not like we haven't been fretting about this already."

"That was what made me think of it. I just overheard him saying Edgar should tell 'her,' and I figured out the rest." She wondered what she ought to be feeling. Fear? "Worrying about it won't help. Did you ever decide how we were getting to town?"

"Yeah, good question," Sabin said, climbing up onto the deck and reaching down to help Gau up. "I thought you guys were going on ahead of us."

"We were a bit held up," Edgar said.

"I'm ready to go now," Locke said. "Edgar, we can send a couple of chocobos back for you. Terra?" She moved to follow him, but Edgar caught her sleeve.

"I'd like a word with you in private, Terra – it'll only be a moment."

"Okay," she said. "Locke, go on ahead, I'll be right down."

"We go too?" Gau asked.

"I... guess so, yeah." Sabin seemed puzzled, but didn't ask any questions. Cyan emerged onto the deck, and Sabin added "Looks like we're going with Locke and Terra."

"Indeed?" the knight replied, without much interest. Terra followed Edgar to the prow of the ship, looking back as the others made their way down the ramp.

"Terra, I want you to know I hadn't put the pieces together until Strago brought the subject up just now," he began. "And I also want you to know I'm not sure I believe he's correct. But if he is, if — _if_ anything happens to you, I want you to know your family will be provided for. A stipend for their support, help and funds if they want to relocate, and trusts for educating or apprenticing all the children. I can have it put in writing this afternoon if you'd like – I believe the crown still has a consulate in Nikeah."

"No, that's— it's— I trust you, Edgar, you don't need to sign anything."

"I want to do something," he said. "We got you into this."

"If it hadn't been this, where would I be?" she asked, smiling faintly. "I... they'll need all that, especially if I'm gone. If you want to draw up a contract..."

"I will," he said. "I hope we never need it."

* * *

The walk into Nikeah proper took some time. The cold seeped through their boots and the silence rang in her ears. Sabin made a few attempts at conversation – "Wasn't Strago trying to get away before Relm caught on?" and "So, all that planning was wasted," and finally "Okay, I guess I can take a hint." After that, it was just the crunching of snow, the sound of breathing, and the occasional call of a bird or flapping of wings.

Terra couldn't stop thinking, now. If she died, she'd never see the kids grown. She'd never know what Katarin's baby would look like, if it was even a boy or girl. She'd never know how things turned out. That was a thought she could face with anger, sorrow, defiance; the thought of dying, just _not existing,_ was overwhelming, too immense and unbearable even to consider. It wasn't even terrifying, it was incomprehensible. She wanted to ask _What happens when you die?_ but Locke got so angry at Strago for bringing it up, she was afraid he'd get mad at her, too, and really, no one would actually know, since none of them had been dead. But it might be nice to know what they thought.

As they walked, she looked around mechanically, trying to recover interest in the way things changed as they grew closer to town; from the road, at first, they saw farmhouses in large fields, then houses with room for large gardens, a handful of chickens, and a pig or goat, then houses with just gardens, interspersed with occasional shops, inns, and pubs, growing denser and closer together. The stopped outside a chocobo stable as Locke went inside, and Terra turned to the others. "What happens when you die? I mean, after you're dead, is that it?"

"Crows eat you," Gau said, as he arranged himself into a careful crouch with only his feet and the tips of his gloved fingers in the snow. "And hyena."

"Gau!" Sabin exclaimed, sounding appalled.

"What? That what happen." Unconcerned, he began drawing circles in the snow with one hand. "And kappa say you heart born over again. Born as something else. Other animal. Not sure how they know."

"Kappas? Really? Gau, is that how you learned to talk?" The wild boy didn't answer Sabin's question, though, and the prince looked back up at Terra. "In Figaro, we think you go on to a better place after you die, though everyone's pretty vague on the details now. Comes of having civil wars over them, even if that was centuries ago."

"Our dead go on to another world," Cyan said. "Once the legend said Death took souls to the other side in a black carriage drawn by skeletal horses, but now he uses a train."

"He does?" Terra said, struck by his certainty.

"I've seen it. Sir Sabin and I have ridden it."

"Yep. Good thing I was never religious or it might have been some kind of a crisis for me."

"Yet you celebrate this," Cyan said.

"Hell, Midwinter's not about religion! It's about... family and stuff. Warm and fuzzy things. And candy and presents. Everybody needs something to brighten the winter up. People need customs and special occasions."

"Does everyone celebrate Midwinter?" Terra asked. Locke was standing in the stable yard, talking to a girl in riding breeches and pointing off to the west.

"Certainly not!" Cyan retorted. "This is all paganish Western nonsense. Doma has no part of it."

"No, you just celebrate the New Year two weeks later." Sabin's tone was mischievous, but Cyan had no response. "In Jidoor I think they celebrate the spring solstice as their most important holiday," he continued, to Terra. "Celes told me the New Year was the most important holiday in the Empire, too, but that's in the summer for them. I don't think they did much in winter."

"Relm said they celebrate something around the fall, something to do with Esper history from around the War of the Magi."

"Their fall. Aren't they below the equator? The seasons are reversed."

"Mobliz's aren't..." Terra said, but Locke rejoined them, and Sabin had a question about the chocobo hire, which turned into a discussion of the rooms Edgar had said he'd rent when he'd expected to arrive in town first. Terra fell behind, thinking of trains.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Celes was growing restless. At least she was in no position where any part of her was likely to fall asleep, but she was feeling the need to fidget, wobbling the sword back and forth on the floor or which earned dire threats of portraiture from Relm. "On _paper,_" the girl would add sternly.

Canvas, apparently, was safe. Pencil, on paper, seemed to be safe enough. Ink wasn't, or charcoal, which was a shame because Relm's charcoal sketches were lovely, even after they came to life, odd translucent things striding over to their doppelgangers to attack. Sometimes she'd play with those on the airship; a line of tiny charcoal moogles dancing on the table, flattish gray charcoal birds flitting around the ship. She'd rub them out if she saw her grandfather coming, and the bird, across the room, would smear and then wink out of existence. But paint was her usual weapon. Alarm over the portrait's nature wasn't what made Celes rotate the sword in a circle around its point until she got another stern look, but she _was_ curious; it was so seldom that they got to see Relm's artwork still, in the expected way.

"Will you hold _still?_" Relm complained.

"What was I doing?" Celes asked.

"Jiggling the sword again. Quit."

"May I move my hands, then?" she asked, attempting to be meek.

"Not yet."

"Quite the slave driver, aren't you?" Setzer had appeared behind Relm. "A remarkable likeness, but is it usual to paint so quickly?"

Relm bristled. "No one asked you. This is how _I_ do it."

"It's not a full portrait, Setzer, she said as much earlier."

"Yeah, see?"

"It's a lovely work, though."

"Yeah, now you try to suck up. You'll need to work harder than that."

"Your choice of subject is superb, as well."

"Using me to hit on someone _else_ isn't going to win you points," Relm said.

"You'd prefer I flirt with you? You're a bit young for me, Relm."

"I'll grow up cute," she said, calmly confident. "Just wait. Okay, Celes, you're done." She climbed down from the high stool where she'd been perched and knelt down to scratch Interceptor's belly. The dog rolled over on his back with his legs in the air. Celes glanced up at the catwalk; Shadow had covered his masked face with one hand. "Yeeess, you're a sweet puppy, aren't you?" Relm was saying to the dog.

"Are you doing that on purpose?" Celes asked her.

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

Relm had simply started out with brush and canvas, no preliminary sketches or other preparations; Celes knew from past portraits that was highly unorthodox. The result had been a rough but flowing black ink sketch. Her hair was a thick loop down her back, the blade of the sword a single, graceful brush stroke, her facial features conveyed with a mere handful of strokes; Celes in shorthand. The color had been filled in afterwards, with a care that seemed at odds with the boldness of the outlines; many colors of gold for her hair, dark green pants and sleeves, black bodice, the white cloak lined with blue. She was carefully painted, but stylized. She could be anyone. She thought of paintings in galleries – Gestahl had enjoyed art and wanted his protegee to feel the same – titles like _Girl with silver necklace_ and _Boy eating an apple_. _General with sword_. No, _Woman with sword,_ surely.

"I kind of wish I'd kept it at just the ink, like Doman brush paintings – did you see those when we went back to the castle? But I wanted to see how it'd look with color. Maybe I can convince someone else to sit for just the outline. Where is everybody, anyway?"

"I think they were going to town," Celes said. She'd agreed to sit for Relm to help Strago, because she had no desire to see Nikeah again; she and Sabin had haunted the docks for weeks, looking for rumors and asking questions, before she'd happened, purely by chance, to catch a glimpse of someone who looked like Edgar in with his hair dyed brown, buying an apple in the market.

"Hey, _Gramps!_" Relm bellowed, and Celes winced as she sank into one of the armchairs.

"He already left," Setzer said.

"What? _Without_ me? What's that senile old coot thinking? He knew I wanted to take a look around here! Setzer, Celes, you two are coming with me to look for him."

"No," Setzer said quite simply.

"Okay. Shadow? Come with me or I'll buy Interceptor one of those knitted doggy sweaters. In _pink._"

"First, you'd have to get to town," he replied. "And then you'd have to somehow dress him in it."

"You really want to take that chance? Come on, I won't bite you."

"You won't pay me, either," he said.

"If you come with me, I'll... paint your portrait on canvas too!" He went back to his book. "I'll buy you a drink?"

"You're not old enough." He turned a page over.

"I'll make Gramps buy you a drink. Come _onnnn_..." she whined.

"Will you pay me by being still for the walk to town?"

"Sure. Wait, you mean totally silent?"

"...quieter than this."

"I'll _try._"

"At least you're honest." The ninja shut his book with a snap, disposed of it somewhere – there might be a table in that corner, Celes thought, though she couldn't remember – and began striding toward the hatch. Relm yelped in dismay and began scrambling for cloak, hat and mittens, casting anxious glances above. When she had her things she whistled for Interceptor and galloped up the stairs to the upper level. The silence in the airship echoed once she was gone.

"Do you think he waited for her?" Celes asked after a moment.

"Who knows? Probably. He'd have no reason to go to Nikeah on his own, I assume, or he would have gone before this."

"She could fend for herself anyway, no further than it is to town."

"True." The silence lengthened into awkwardness. "So," he said. "Had you heard the latest theory?"

"Theory?"

"Strago believes Kefka's either drained the magic from the goddesses, or that he controls their magic, and either way he has access to it at the very root."

"I know," she said.

"He's also come to the conclusion that defeating Kefka might harm all of us, and kill Terra."

"What?" She sat up abruptly. "Beyond the obvious risks, you mean?"

"If we destroy him, we destroy magic – and we've all taken magic into ourselves."

"I've had it in me since I was... barely old enough to walk," she said. "And Terra was born with it. Terra's _made_ of it." She caught herself biting her thumbnail, and forced herself, consciously, to quit, hands folded in her lap.

"Exactly." He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm sorry, Celes, I just thought you should know; Strago brought it up with Edgar in front of me, and then Terra walked in while they were talking about it."

"Oh, no."

"Locke stormed off with half the group in tow; Terra seemed less upset than he did."

"Maybe she realized," Celes said. "I wish I had. Now I wonder if I was right to drag her away from her... her family, I suppose is the right word."

"Wouldn't you rather face your fate with a sword in hand? I would, and I'm a disaster with swords."

"Yes, we've all noticed," she said, absently. "She might have preferred to decide for herself before she left. We need her, but they do, too. I wish I'd had a chance to talk to her before they left."

"I expect they'll be back tomorrow at the latest," he said. "Or you could head for town yourself. I'd be happy to accompany you."

"What about the ship? No, don't worry about it, Setzer, I'm going to try to catch up with Shadow and Relm. I could use the time alone before I find them to clear my thoughts." As she spoke, she was buttoning her cloak. "If you'd like anything from town I could pick it up for you," she added, tugging on gloves.

"Nothing I can think of," he said, watching her. "Send word if the whole group is staying the night at the inn," he added.

"I will," she said, and then she was making her own clattering way up the stairs.

* * *

The shops weren't in what Edgar thought of as the shopping district. They were actually rather near the rough dockside area that "Gerad" had haunted while trying to find a way back to Figaro. Bohemian, he supposed; artists were traditionally poor, weren't they? This wasn't an area for the wealthy.

Edgar was beginning to wish that he hadn't volunteered to accompany Strago on his errands once they got to town. He had his own goals in town – not just purchases for Terra's brood of orphans, but certain banking transactions, on her behalf and others. Strago, meanwhile, was dithering over some art supplies at a horribly leisurely pace. The old man muttered to himself over varying weights of paper, rolls of canvas – "Shouldn't they be flat?" Edgar asked, and Strago snorted, leaving it to the shopgirl to explain to him that artists built their own frames, usually – and tubes of already-prepared paint. Veneer, pigments in cakes and bottles and jars, flasks of oil, brushes of varying widths and sizes and different type of fur or hair for the bristles.

While Edgar had never thought himself a philistine, he couldn't bring himself to care, or to see what the difference was. The shopgirl, a petite, pretty thing with curly red hair, demonstrated sample brushes for him, but he grew bored immediately and decided to attempt another failed seduction. She began jabbing his hand with the handle of the brush whenever she thought it was creeping towards her. "I would never take _liberties,_" he protested, feeling somewhat wounded and sounding thoroughly so.

"My hand may not be a liberty but you can still stay away from it," she snapped.

"But I—"

"All right, I'm ready to check out," Strago announced loudly. The delight on the girl's face was a bit insulting, Edgar thought – he flirted with women every day, it couldn't be that much of a burden on them. He lounged against the counter as the girl wrapped things in brown paper parcels for Strago, chattering about her betrothed and how patchy the mail service was and how she avoided the main square now because a strange old man had taken up a post there to hector the passerby about repenting.

"Repenting what?" Edgar asked.

"Lechery," Strago suggested, with a broad grin, and the girl laughed.

"Just in general, I think," she said, but she was still smiling.

Outside the shop, a small choir had taken up a position on the corner. "I can never remember all the words to that one," Edgar said. "Why can't they sing something with less slaughter of innocents? There are hopeful songs for the holidays."

"How many people have you seen lately who have much cause to be happy?" Strago asked. "Did you miss the refugee camp south of town, when we were flying in? They're saying half the world's died."

"I'd say half of it's underwater, anyway. But I wouldn't want to dwell on it, I never have."

"Some of them seem happy enough. And not just the shopkeepers." Strago shrugged. "Where next, your banks?"

"I was going to take rooms at the inn," Edgar said, "if only so the others will have a place to send things if need be. And then the banks. Maybe the embassy. There's no need for you to dance attendance if you want to stay in this area."

"Well." Strago thumped his cane down on the cobblestones. "Which way toward the inn?"

Edgar gestured to his left, and the old man stumped ahead of him. "Are you certain?"

"Well, there's, ah, something I meant to ask." Edgar caught up and almost immediately had to slow his pace, looking down at Strago's hunched shoulders and wispy hair. "It's about what you said to Terra."

"About the risk?"

"About taking care of her survivors," he corrected. "I, well... whether or not I make it through this, I'm not going to be around that much longer. Relm's going to be all right – she can make her way as an artist, and in the meantime she's got money. Some I put away, a lot more her father sent."

"Her father? I thought both her parents were dead."

"Her father's..." Strago shook his head. "He's not a guardian for her, that's all. She may need one. I plan to hang on till everyone's sick of me, but I need to be prepared." Edgar nodded, not that Strago was paying attention. "I had a couple picked, parents of a friend of hers, but they died in the Fall. Could you name one? Someone who can invest her money and get her a good place with a master painter, get her into a guild or help her make contacts? I don't even know how that works."

"Depends on the place, I think. Jidoor has the Academy, Figaro has a guild – I'd have to find out where she'd want to live..."

"See, there you go."

"Wait, I didn't—"

"Just name someone. You don't want a lovesick twelve-year-old on your coattails. Or at least, you'd better not." He looked up then, and winked. Then he started laughing. Edgar realized he must look as appalled as he felt. "Guess not," Strago said, still chortling as he resumed his forward march.

"I... I'm sure I can find someone to help her on her way," he said. "Lovesick? Isn't that a bit extreme?"

"Who knows?" Strago was enjoying this altogether too much. Edgar made a strangled noise, and Strago's laughter redoubled. "She's tough. Just get her a place where she can paint and she'll be happy."

"I think I know a few people," Edgar said, remembering his father's advice – _If you don't like what they're saying, pretend you're deaf._ "I'm not so sure about investing money – stands to reason there'll be a lot of risky ventures after we finish Kefka."

"I'll leave it to you if it comes to that," Strago said. They skirted a busker with a guitar, and Edgar absently tossed the man a gold piece.

"Let's all hope it doesn't," Edgar said. "We'd all miss you when you're gone. Relm especially. She may think she doesn't act like it..."

Strago prodded gingerly at a wet-looking cobblestone, checking for ice. "I don't have any plans to check out early," he said. "But at my age, there's no point to denying it."

_No use in pretending, is there?_ Father had said, toward the end, when even his breath sounded painful, and Sabin had choked back a sob. "Once you've taken care of the essentials, being a bit less clear-eyed... might be kinder to some others," Edgar said, finally.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Once they got near the center of town, Terra began to remember why she didn't really like going into the centers of towns. The streets were crowded with carriages, riders, and always pedestrians, hordes of them, and the edges of the roads with stalls and pushcarts and people sitting on blankets full of their wares, or shopkeepers trying to entice customers into their stores.

"At least the economy's thriving here," Sabin said.

"Because of this infernal gift-giving custom," Cyan grumbled, but Sabin ignored him and Terra didn't think he'd been speaking to her.

"Nothing wrong with giving gifts," Locke said. "Or getting them."

"Shiny," Gau agreed. Cyan gave him a look and the boy straightened his hunched shoulders. "Shiny," he repeated, as if to make clear that he wasn't abandoning his stance on gifts.

"Necklace for the pretty lady?" someone said. Terra bumped into Locke, who'd slowed.

"He means you, Terra."

"Me?" Normally, people just stared at her hair. She reached self-consciously up for her hood to check if any had come loose. "I don't need a necklace."

"Sorry, but the pretty lady has spoken," Locke said, and took her gloved hand as they began moving again.

"I was the pretty lady?"

"Locke's just messing with you, Terra," Sabin said. "The guy meant Cyan."

"Foolishness," the knight retorted, then stumbled as someone bumped into him. "Do these knaves _relish_ this crushing mob? What good does this press do any man except the pickpocket and ruffian? Honest men cannot _breathe_ in such crowds!"

"Okay, we turn here!" Sabin announced, abruptly and loudly, and they picked their way around a stopped cart with what appeared to be a damaged axle, winding up on a narrow, nearly-empty side street. A group of three girls walked down the other side of the street, the opposite direction, and a small family walked ahead of them some way, only to disappear around a corner. "There, see? Better."

"Somewhat," the knight admitted, grudgingly.

"Very better!" Gau elaborated, much more enthusiastically.

"I think if we cut through this way we can get to that cobbler Terra used before."

"Any would do..." Terra said.

"Except that you've dealt with this one before, so you know he'll have what you need in stock, or he'll make it quick if he doesn't," Sabin pointed out.

"Oh. Right."

Around another corner, they came out on a less-packed commercial street. A few carriages were visible, and a respectable number of pedestrians, but Cyan's grumbling didn't resume. Light spilled out of the store windows onto the snowy streets, less trampled here. Pine and holly boughs decorated most of the doors and windows.

"I think it was near a bakery?" Terra said. As they made their way down the street, a door opened in front of them, and a boy of nine or ten walked out backwards, gesturing broadly as he told some story his mother, holding the door open with his back as she walked out past him. A younger boy squeezed around her legs, ignoring her chiding tone, and ran ahead, towards the group, until he hit an icy patch. He teetered, arms pinwheeling, but Cyan caught his shoulder to steady him.

"There, lad, easy," he said, smiling. "Stick to the snowy parts when you can."

"Yessir," the boy answered, sounding abashed as his mother came towards them, calling her apologies and thanks. She was wearing black, and so were her sons. Cyan, to all appearances, was kindly, polite, telling her there was no need to apologize, she had a fine pair of sons, and wishing her happy holidays. He watched silently as they walked away, the older boy poking the other one in the shoulder, the mother obviously trying not to laugh. As the family turned the corner the group had just rounded, Cyan drew himself up and declared "I believe I shall take a walk alone."

"What, right now?" Sabin asked.

"Precisely." He turned with the precision of a military drill and strode across the street.

"Um, do you know how to find the inn?" Locke called after his departing back, but there was no sign he'd heard.

"I... hope so?" Terra said doubtfully. "Wasn't he here before, once?"

"Yeah, he was, but I don't know about finding the place again..." Sabin said. "Ah, hell. I guess he wants to be alone."

* * *

Interceptor was enjoying the snow, surprising both the humans; he pranced through it happily, ate a mouthful of snow, ran his nose through a drift, and then turned back towards them to play, forelegs lowered and haunches in the air, his stub of a tail wagging. Relm charged at him, laughing, and the girl and the dog chased each other in circles around and in front of Shadow. Once he might have smiled at the sight. He'd never had the heart to train Interceptor to be the attack dog he claimed to have; he just relied on the dog's protectiveness and intimidating looks for the rest. Lucky thing the field was empty.

Eventually Relm tired, and she stood still, waiting, while Shadow and Interceptor caught up to her. "So is that warm?" she asked. Shadow didn't answer, just kept walking past her. After a few steps he heard her hurrying to catch up, struggling through the snow.

"Walk in my footprints," he suggested.

"Nah, I want to see if I can see your face," she said, peering up at him from his side.

"Very little chance of that." They were nearly to the fence enclosing the field where they'd landed.

"Seriously, I've been all _over_ the world, and I've seen maybe three people that dress that way, counting you, and one of them admitted he was dressing that way _because_ of you. So what gives?" She clambered over the split-rail fence, and he jumped it easily.

"The truth?"

"Um, _duh._"

"It's supposedly the dress of a lost Doman warrior clan. I'm not fully trained in their arts, but that's why it's called a lost clan. Other than my imitators, the style only lives on in Doman plays and illustrations for dime novels."

"What's a dime novel?"

"A cheap adventure novel." They wouldn't have had them in Thamasa, he realized. Apparently she hadn't been all over the bookstores of the world.

"So what's a dime?"

"A Figaro coin, ten or fifteen to an Imperial gil. Made of copper, I believe."

"Are you from Figaro?"

"No."

"Doma?"

"Why?"

"You _are!_" she crowed. That look of triumph was just like her mother's. But the ninja garb gave it away, he thought.

"Not exactly. I was born there, but my parents came from Nikeah. To Domans, outsiders are foreigners even if they were born in the castle town and grew up speaking the language."

She was silent for a moment, perhaps digesting that, kicking up puffs of snow as she shuffled along. "So why the Doman warrior thing?"

"I'm anonymous, but I stand out in another way. I'm remembered, sometimes feared. And I liked the way it looked."

She grinned up at him. Freckles across the bridge of her nose, a slight gap between her front teeth. "I knew you were a human down in there."

"Mm. Not really."

"So is it warm?"

"Could be worse. A coat would spoil the look."

"I dunno, those long overcoats like Setzer wears, you could maybe pull off one of those. Or long underwear! Do you wear that?"

"If I told you that I'd have to kill you."

She threw her head back and laughed. "Okay, keep it to yourself. You guys'll need me against Kefka, plus I bet Gramps would be really pissed off if I was dead."

"Most likely."

"So why do you want to be anonymous?"

"I kill people for a living. Why do you think?"

"Well, you used to. You don't anymore."

"They're still dead. People tend to remember. And so do magistrates."

"Yeah, but the person they'd be after is... Shadow, right? So you could change your name and wear normal clothes and no one would know who you were."

"...mm." It was never really that simple.

"So why do you think Gramps ditched me?"

"Maybe he needed some peace and quiet."

"Ohhh, you are _so clever!_ I'll have to paint a portrait to see if I can make it as clever as you! On paper and everything!" When he didn't respond, she changed her theme to Strago's faithlessness, Edgar's hand in it, Celes's fidgeting, "aren't soldiers supposed to be all disciplined?" and then "I bet _you'd_ sit still."

"No."

"Aww! Maybe Edgar would. Painting him would be fun!" And she was off again. Interceptor pressed up against his leg and he scratched the dog behind the ears. He was unusually aware of the ring around the chain on his neck, hidden in the black layers he wore – shrouded, Locke had called him. The thief wasn't wrong.

He let the chatter wash over him – the voice was so much like _hers,_ but distinct – until they got well into town. "Okay, we want to get to Crown and Harriot," Relm said.

"We do?"

"_I_ do and you're my bodyguard. Though I guess you're off the hook now, I can take care of myself here."

"Can you?"

"I did before! I lived on the docks for months right after the world broke."

He was suddenly horribly aware of how _small_ she was, how young. "Alone?"

"Nahhh, I had the entire Figaro army with me." She shoved her hands in her pockets, and Interceptor nosed at one of them until she pulled her hand out to pet him. "I was okay. Between setting a pimp's shoes on fire and stabbing this one guy and all my artwork, I had it so everyone was afraid to come near me, let alone make me do anything. I could make chalk drawings on stone jump people, it was really cool. And I could make enough money to eat with safe art, sometimes. And there was always stuff to scrounge. Plus it was summer, so not having a roof wasn't that big a deal."

"Ah." What she was describing was really fairly pleasant compared to the lives of some street children. Nothing that should trouble him, and it was all past now anyway. If she was concealing anything from him, it was no matter – it would be too late for anything but revenge anyway.

"Then Owzer's boyfriend, what's his name – that guy that runs the opera house? I'm not sure I _ever_ heard his name. He was checking on some of Owzer's properties around here, to find out if they even still existed, and he saw me drawing and started trying to give me money. Once I figured out he wasn't some creepy pedophile I figured, hell, why not? So I made him take me back to Thamasa first."

"Why not stay there?"

"We had a deal. And I wanted to see Jidoor!" She started walking, and he kept his pace slow to match hers. "I spent my whole life thinking other places were just myths – and they kind of were. I guess you never saw the globe in Grandpa's room, or the atlases, but our maps were so out of date. They didn't have _anything_ east of Figaro, they didn't even try to guess, just kind of petered out."

"The War of the Magi must have been a catclysm like this, reshaping the land."

"Yeah, and none of our tribe bothered to check the changes before they took off for the ends of the earth. So stupid."

He knew the answers, but he'd ask all the same. "Do you ever get travelers? Your speech isn't really different from ours. Languages normally change."

"Oh, yeah, we get travelers all the time, they just never stay very long. Can't _afford_ to. There's a trade zone down at the tip where your group landed the first time – or there was, I guess – so people were coming and going from there, too. And people leave and come back, Goddess knows what they tell other people about where they're from. My father was one of them, Grandpa says." And here he'd thought he was steering away from awkward subjects. "I don't even remember what he looks like, but that's what the old man says."

"I see," he said, neutral. Regret was one of those emotions he'd killed.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Sabin was feeling fairly proud. Terra had smoothly peeled Gau off and they'd gone to handle some of her errands. He and Locke had then plunged into the crowds to seek gifts. Edgar was easy; get him something he could take apart and he'd be entertained for ages. If he could play with it, so much the better. Model trains were perfect. Cyan didn't seem to want anything, which Sabin understood easily enough. The asceticism of his own training had actually been a borrowing from Doma. It hadn't taken deep enough root to keep him from liking nice things, but enough that he never seemed to notice anymore if the bathwater was cold.

Gau was the challenge. He didn't _want_ things, really. He didn't use things he _needed,_ like shoes, if he could help it. He had a magpie's eye for shiny things, and an energetic kitten's ability to be distracted from them, and like the animals who'd raised him he tended to make his own fun when he had nothing else to do and didn't feel like a nap. Sabin knew and recognized all that, but he still couldn't help feeling the boy had been missing years and years of the Midwinters he'd deserved. So he bought bright picture books – Cyan wanted him to learn to read, and had at least compromised that Doman characters could wait for now – and a gleaming set of armored soldiers, a stuffed bear, a toy sailboat – doubts about that one didn't arise until well after he left the shop – and, finally, another train set. If Gau didn't like it, Edgar would. Or he could use it for spare parts. He hadn't really thought of buying anything for anyone else. Until Edgar had mentioned the date he'd forgotten it.

It wasn't until his arms were being heaped with parcels by a helpful clerk that he noticed how much Locke was buying – dolls, toy soldiers in wood and lead and tin, model chocobos a doll could ride, a hobby-bird, a gilt-decorated box, rubber balls of various sizes and a stack of picture books. "Who are those for?" he asked.

"Terra. Well, for her kids. I need to show these to her, see what she thinks."

"Are you kidding? Those kids have been hitting each other over the head with sticks for the last year because they've got no other way to entertain themselves. They'll be thrilled with anything they get." He grinned and fitted his chin over the topmost parcel. "And then they'll start hitting each other over the head with the toys."

"You make gift-giving sound so noble," Locke retorted, spilling coins out onto the counter.

"I like shameless materialism, but come on. And don't you remember being a kid?" Sabin said, moving closer to block the view of any other customers a bit; he would have thought Locke would have better sense than to flaunt money this way, even in a nice part of town. But quite a bit of it went to the saucer-eyed clerks after all, and no one else seemed to have taken much notice of them.

"How are you going to carry all that?" he asked.

"...good question."

"My girlfriend's a carter," one of the young men behind the counter volunteered. "If you have someplace you want it sent, I could go get her."

"Bless you, my child," Sabin said.

Room was found behind the counter and in a storeroom for all their purchases – an older woman, probably the shopkeeper or at least a manager of some kind, took them over and directed clerks on making room when it couldn't be found. "See, there are benefits to buying that much," Locke said, once they were outside. "You think she would have been that helpful if it'd just been your haul?"

"Well, she might've..." Sabin replied, feeling oddly defensive. "Hey, I bet if I'd paid her in Figaro money and then turned sideways, that would have helped."

"They'd take it? What's the exchange rate?"

"I think our gil are exactly twice the weight of their gold coins, and identical to the Empire's old ones. Edgar's idea, used to be you had to swap your money when you traveled."

"I guess big cities are different. Most places you still do," Locke said absently, but he was looking ahead, and Sabin looked around, trying to see what had caught his eye. In the bow window of a store ahead of them, illuminated against the gathering twilight, he saw green hair, a maroon sweater. As they watched, Terra picked up a pair of shoes and turned her head, set them down and snagged another, then stood upright and out of their view.

"I guess we don't need to look for her too long," Sabin said.

"Yeah..."

"Locke, is something wrong?"

"Why?"

"I don't know. You look weird. More than usual." No laughter or irritation. "You didn't threaten to rip my lungs out for that, and the way you tore out of there on the airship – I mean, that wasn't how you planned the groups, was it?"

"It's... it was stupid, I guess."

"_What_ was?" It never took him long to get impatient.

Locke was bearing to the right, into a narrow alley between two stores, and Sabin followed him. "Strago thinks Terra's going to die."

"Why her, especially? Fighting Kefka's dangerous, we all know that."

"Because of the magic. The statues— Strago thinks if we kill Kefka, magic will go away and Terra will die because she's half Esper."

"What? Why? I mean, why should— that's not right! She's half human too!"

"Hey," Locke said, sounding surprised. "You're right, she is."

"There's nothing stupid about getting upset over that!"

"Well, it's not like Strago's saying he wants her to die. Just said she might, and we don't know. It's not like it's his fault."

"Yeah, but... ah, hell." He wiped his eyes. He'd always cried so easily; Vargas used to pick on him relentlessly over it, and before that, Edgar. "Does she know?"

"She heard before I did. Asked him if she was going to die." Locke laughed, but it sounded hollow. "And she just seems so reasonable about it. I mean... did she seem upset to you?"

"Maybe she already sort of knew? I mean, if she's got some kind of... magic sixth sense, or something..."

"I don't know. Maybe. I hope not, 'cause that might mean it's true. Or maybe she's in shock."

Sabin nodded. "She's..."

"She _is_ half human," Locke said. "Maybe that'll help. Somehow."

"I hope so."

Locke glanced at the wall Sabin was leaning on. "Aren't we right by the store she's in?"

"I think we might be. I guess we ought to go collect her and Gau."

Inside, a blast of warmth hit him in the face. Terra was standing over Gau as he stomped around. "Still no like," he was saying.

"But it's better than the old pair, right?" She looked up and flashed a smile at them. Sabin headed in their direction. Locke hesitated, then angled toward the fireplace. "We're trying to find Gau a new pair of shoes. He said the old ones pinch."

"Have you got the rest of your order?" Locke asked from the fireplace.

She nodded in the direction of one of the corners, where a stack of boxes loomed, blocking access to a few shelves.

"Just no like shoes!"

"Your feet will freeze if you don't wear them," she pointed out. "Don't those at least give you a fair amount of room?"

"...yes..." he admitted, sulky, ducking his head.

"Then we'll buy you those and head for the inn," Terra said. She began counting out gold into the clerk's hand, and Gau began jumping up and down, rattling the floorboards. "Gau!" she snapped, at the same moment Sabin did. The boy laughed and climbed onto a chair, trying to perch on the arm the way he liked to do barefoot, but he wobbled and slid and finally gave up.

"Let's leave this poor fellow in peace," Sabin said.

"Oh, it's no trouble," the clerk said, mildly, the first words Sabin had heard from him.

"We have a cart ordered," Locke said. "It might have had time to arrive."

"Can we send it to the inn, or the airship?"

"We can't take Gau to it," Sabin added, as Locke pushed the door open.

"Why not?" Gau demanded, as he darted outside and then back in. Sabin stepped out into the cold and Gau followed on his heels. "Want look!"

"There are surprises for you on it."

"Want see!"

"You can't, that's why they're surprises."

"Want!"

"Sorry. You have to wait." Sabin grinned. No wonder his parents had always been such sadists about gift surprises and dropping hints. This was _fun._

"You mean!" Gau declared. "You mean to Cyan too!"

"What? How was I mean to Cyan?"

"He _go._"

"That wasn't my fault!" Except that Cyan hated all the festivity – whether because it was frivolous or just because he was a Doman and didn't like being smacked in the face with a holiday he didn't celebrate, Sabin couldn't tell. But it could be both. And Sabin had dragged him along anyway. And hell, even if he might have tolerated it once, all this stuff about family togetherness couldn't be much fun for him.

"You _mean,_" Gau repeated. "Go find Cyan. Say you sorry."

"Yeah, we probably ought to. You wanna come?"

"No. Look at surprises."

"Not a chance, kid," he said, hooking an arm around Gau's neck. "You're coming with me."

"Um, Sabin?" Terra said, and like a splash of cold water he remembered. Locke was right, though; she didn't look upset, or scared. "Locke and I were going to go to the cart, he wanted me to look at some of the stuff he bought... are you guys going on?"

"Yeah, we're going to try and track Cyan down if we can. You two know how to find the inn?"

"It's... um..."

"If we're on Meeker now, you just keep going south till you hit Dockside, then turn west and you'll find it. West is right," he added, seeing she was opening her mouth to ask. "The Blue Lion. Edgar's bound to have gotten there by now."

"Okay," she said, and was about to turn away when he spoke.

"Terra?" She turned back, and he rested his hand on the top of her head. "You... be careful, okay?"

She smiled at him, but she looked sad. "Locke told you?"

"Yeah, just... Just promise you'll... I don't know, try to stick around."

"I want to," she said. He smiled a little, ruffled her bangs and let her go. She turned back toward Locke, and he waved at them both before turning to go with Gau, who bounded ahead, turned back to ask "What that about?" then lost interest and darted off, threading through the crowd. Sabin turned back one last time. Terra and Locke were walking close together, and Terra pulled her hood up over her head again as he watched. Locke looked about like he felt, but he smiled at something Terra said. Sabin turned back, worried he'd lose Gau in the crowd, but the boy was at his side again, tugging at his arm, urging him on.

* * *

Once the cold of the air outside hit her face, Celes had realized that even if she could catch up with Shadow and Relm, she didn't want to. Neither wanted her company; they didn't really want each others' company. And she just wanted to be alone, to think.

The cold had always cleared her head. As a young soldier in Vector, they'd spent months training in the mountains, where sometimes it snowed even in summer. She'd never joined the other cadets in their games, snow wars and ice down the collar; she'd preferred to wake early, before they'd trampled the snow into oblivion, and look at the way it muffled and cleansed the world.

So, on the ground, she looked at the tracks of feet both human and chocobo, human handprints where Gau must have been crouching, and she turned her footsteps west, the opposite direction from all the others, from town. She walked through unmarked snow towards the edges of a forest. She didn't think it belonged to the farmhouse whose land they were borrowing, but if it did, surely they could stand to loan her some time in it, with everything else they were using.

She saw the small marks of a bird's feet, and a brush-like indentation from the wings. Cat footprints not far away, but the bird must have escaped. The cat itself appeared as she reached the woods, winding about her ankles, but gave up on her when it became clear that a brief scratch behind the ears was all it could expect. Less of the snow had reached the ground here, but there was still a blanket of it around her feet, and she heard the occasional rustle and muffled thump as a branch dropped some.

It had been snowing in Narshe, too, when Terra changed shape in front of them in screaming and fire and flew away, when the pieces began to fall together for her. In Vector, secrets were the military's currency, and Celes, sixteen, newly promoted to the rank of special general, magitek knight, hadn't commanded many. No one would tell her _why_ Terra was being court-martialed and given into Kefka's custody. They said she'd tried to destroy the Magitek lab, but that made no sense, and later she'd heard rumors that the real charges involved helping four Espers escape. Espers were always rumors; virtually every Magitek trooper had seen one once, but all the information about them passed in whispers and classified reports.

But when Celes saw how the Esper Tritoch reacted to Terra, it made more sense. There'd been a visit to the lab, a field trip, Terra and a class of younger cadets. If that reaction with Tritoch had been multiplied by a lab full of Espers, no wonder there was destruction, no wonder scientists and students had been injured, no wonder Espers had escaped. If any of the witnesses had thought the reaction was unconscious or involuntary, they hadn't said so.

Terra had been her friend since childhood, and Celes hadn't been able, for all her dissenting at the trial, to save her from Kefka. She'd thought at the time that Terra was being framed, that there had to be a misunderstanding; knowing now that her friend's life had been disrupted and maimed by the consequence of her own nature and the Empire's sins made it worse. Now she finally had something to live for, a home, a life happier and more normal than she would have been allowed in Vector – and she was likely to die before she could return to it.

The woods weren't as deep as she'd thought. On the other side of the stand of trees was more snow, untouched. Celes set out across it, drawing up short as she realized she could hear the sea, and proceeding more slowly. She reached the edge of a bluff overlooking the ocean and a narrow strip of sand and snow below. The view on the island had been similar, though the cliff had been higher and more sheer.

Celes had wondered before about her own future, and envied Terra her certainty, her place to return. All she'd ever done with her own life was try to throw it away. She'd given herself up without struggle or defiance when the guards came to arrest her, confident in Imperial justice; when that promise proved as hollow as honor she'd still tried to stay in her cell, until Locke took her hands, chafing the life back into them as he promised to protect her. She'd given herself back to the Empire to save the others in the wreckage of Cid's lab. She'd given herself back into nothingness after Cid died, watching the sun rise into a sky the color of a bruise and thinking of a dawn long ago that she shouldn't have lived to see, the gray-blue morning twilight over South Figaro. She'd walked away from her death, followed Locke under the occupied city into an old woman's basement, filled, strangely, with sawdust martial-arts dummies and half-finished carpentry projects. When they walked into her kitchen, she poured them coffee and told them not to tell her their names. She should have died that morning, Celes had thought, staring at the sickly clouds and thinking of a vast, empty, ruined world beyond the livid sea.

She hadn't really wanted to die; even when she despaired after Cid's death, she hadn't wanted to die, merely to stop being alone, to stave off long empty years of more despair. But she hadn't exactly wanted to live, either. Her life had a purpose for now, but when the others spoke of what they'd do after – return to the ancient castle in the caves, improve Figaro's defenses, gather the survivors from Doma – she stayed silent or slipped away. She had no home, never mind plans or dreams, and yet she was likelier to survive. It seemed terribly, cruelly unfair, as unfair the iron circlet biting into Terra's brow, as unfair as the shackles on her own wrists and the stone at her back.

The leap held no appeal for her now, but neither did turning back.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I meant to get the whole fic posted by the twenty-first, but it's a bit late for that...

Chapter Six

Relm steered them to the rough part of town, and Shadow just reminded himself that her time on the streets here was long past, and besides, she didn't _act_ like someone irreparably damaged. The version she'd given him might be fairly close to the truth. She had the confidence, and for that matter, the abilities, to have carried it off. He knew from experience that uncertainty could be more dangerous than going unarmed. And it was nothing to him, anyway, was it? He'd said as much to Strago years before.

She darted in and out of one shop after another, inspecting paints – price-checking, he realized after the third store. After the fifth she went back to the second and hovered over the selection, picking up three of the little tubes, putting one back, taking up another, then retrieving the one she'd dropped and returning a different one to the shelf. He watched her dither from outside the store – Interceptor had, unaccountably, growled at the clerk the first time they went in – and then go up to the clerk to pay, standing on tiptoes to see over the counter as her purchases were wrapped up.

"It _sucks_ being a kid," she informed him, as she came outside.

"Someday you'll be tall enough to see over counters."

"I didn't mean that! Smartass. I meant Grandpa gives me an _allowance._ Why don't I get to keep _my_ share of our loot like everyone else does?"

"Because he knows you'd spend it all on paint and brushes?" Shadow suggested. "Maybe he's thinking of your future?"

"Pfft."

"Of course, it has to be something far more nefarious."

"The future's _boring._ I wanna paint!"

"I'm sure a time will come when you can spend your inheritance on paint."

"I don't want an inheritance," she said. "Like, if he died?"

He thought she sounded afraid, or at least less brash and certain than she had before. "He... doesn't seem especially frail."

"I know! He'll probably outlive me. You think he's a vampire or something?" He choked on a surprised chuckle. "Did you just _laugh?_" she demanded, suddenly fascinated.

"Not really."

"Uh huh. Hey, can I paint you without your mask?"

"_Why?_"

"'Cause I'm curious. I mean, you sort of have expressions, like voice tones and stuff, I want to see if you have facial expressions when nobody sees them... I won't show it to anybody! Promise! I just want to. Please?"

"No."

"Okay, this shop."

He followed her in, watching Interceptor out of the corner of his eye and trying to determine if there was any cause-and-effect here. But no, she'd simply reached a shop she obviously remembered fondly, and she headed straight for the shelves of sketchbooks. He hung back in the corner, as he'd done in every shop where Interceptor hadn't menaced the employees. Relm happily tucked a sketchbook under her arm and went to look at the brushes. And someone, surprisingly, said "Shadow? Sir?"

Relm's head whipped around before he'd looked toward the voice. "Yes?" he asked, not quite reaching for the shuriken at his belt, but ready to. The man didn't appear to be armed, but he was broad-shouldered and fit.

"Do you remember me? At the Colosseum..." When Shadow made no response, he continued. "I went there thinking maybe I could make some real money that way. Didn't realize being a big guy didn't make me a fighter. Anyway, I pulled through one fight, then I was up against you and you just trounced me. And then when I yielded you didn't kill me."

"Ah." He still didn't remember. He hadn't killed many people in the Colosseum. He hadn't seen the point. It made no difference in his winnings, and he didn't care what the crowd wanted; he didn't plan to be a gladiator by trade, as some of the fighters did. He hadn't lied when he told Terra he'd killed his emotions. He'd killed more than that, of course, without passion or hesitation. For all the men and women, scores of them, who'd died at his hands, he didn't feel a single stirring of feeling. The only two deaths he'd ever regretted, the only ones he'd always regret, were two that he hadn't dealt. He'd spared the man out of genuine indifference; he was beaten, no further danger, and killing him yielded no more reward than simply disarming him.

"We just want to thank you," a woman added, approaching from behind and taking the man's arm. He smiled at her, and Shadow realized, again, that he'd never be able to remember Charis without something of an ache. Some things died easier than others. Easier to be dispassionate than forgetful.

"I... suppose you're welcome."

"Your little girl's purchases are on us," the woman added.

"Me?" Relm squeaked, and the woman beamed at her. Relm beamed back and slid another sketchbook off the shelf, acting as if she thought she was being furtive.

"She's..." _She's not my daughter,_ he'd intended to say, but the lie died on his lips. "That's very kind of you. But not very prudent."

"Daddy!" Relm protested, from over by the paints.

"It's Yuletide!" she said. "Consider it a gift from us. And we're _really_ grateful. This _idiot_ just took off one day and left me a letter – we were just engaged back then and he was claiming he'd make our fortune."

"Sorry..." the man said, sounding sheepish.

"If it's too much, we'll just deduct it from his wages."

"Lina!" the man exclaimed, but his wife just kept smiling, and Relm swept an array of brushes onto the sketchbooks she was holding in front of her like a table.

* * *

In the end, he'd had to call a halt to Relm's looting of the store, and loom ominously over her as the couple put everything in bags and paper parcels. "You are _no fun,_" she informed him outside the store.

"So I've been told," he said. Inside the store, the woman was kissing her husband on the chin. He looked away. "Don't you think you did enough damage?"

"No!"

"Of course," he said.

"Okay, one more thing, I think it's near the inn, and then you have to pose for me."

"No, I don't."

'One more thing' turned out to be a cheerful, crowded general store far north of the region where she'd first steered them. After an initial glance inside, she ordered Interceptor to sit and he did the same, unwilling to think his dog might obey her alone. Then they went in. She grabbed a dozen or so strange paper cylinders and a couple of candles, paid for them herself, and then plunged outside again. "Too many people!" she gasped, out in the air. Interceptor nosed at the bag and she scratched his head.

"At least it was warm," he said. "What were those things you bought?"

She held out the bag she'd been given, showing him what he'd already seen – linked cylinders of colorful paper. "Yule crackers," she said. "See, I've never ever celebrated this, and I think it's kind of silly to get all, you know, religious about it. It's just about the weather, come on, the sun's going to rise sooner or later. And all those choirs are really damn annoying. But I've read about it in books and I heard of these things – they, like, _explode!_ And then you get prizes from them! How cool is that?"

"Mm."

"You know, until you did that, you were practically talking to me," she said. "I mean, saying things and asking questions." He was, he realized. This was _why_ he'd always kept to himself; if he didn't, it was too easy to slip up.

"Must put a stop to that."

"If you pose you can't talk much because there'll be a point where I need to paint your mouth," she said.

"I said no."

"I'm wearing you down," she retorted, with flagrant disregard for the evidence. "Let's head for the inn."

* * *

Sabin's search had been random. They'd returned to the spot where Cyan had left them, and gone looking for parks or isolated areas nearby. They found a public garden, but not Cyan. A passerby hailed them as they stood in the middle of a snow-covered rose garden, and Sabin, struck by a thought, asked if there were any Doman-style gardens in the area.

"There a couple of restaurants around town, the one by the harbor is really good."

"I meant gardens," Sabin explained, slowly and a bit louder than before, the way he tended to speak to foreigners and the elderly, even though he knew better and knew Strago would poke him with the cane. This guy was young, but maybe he was hard of hearing. "Like, rock gardens, ornamental gardens?"

"There's a shrine off in the east quarter, I think. And a kendo... thing. Do they call them dojos?"

"Possibly," Sabin said. "To the east? Thanks!" He took off at a jog to warm up, and Gau followed and then passed him, loping and occasionally pushing off the ground with his hands. His style of running could sometimes be murder on pants, but fortunately he seemed to have sturdy ones this time.

The shrine was a wash, too — they forgot to take off their shoes, which set the woman who minded the shrine to berating them. Neither understood the language, but the tone was clear enough and so was the adamant pointing at their feet. They retreated in defeat, having seen no one was inside, and then Gau took off across the street, heedless of the cart that nearly ran him down. Sabin followed once the way was clear, into an ordinary city park or vacant area, filled with evergreens, snow, and, half-obscured by the trees, a human form in dark blue and black, head bowed.

Sabin hung back, unsure if he ought to intrude on the older man's privacy, but Gau bounded forward, calling "Cyan! Cyan!" Sabin saw the knight jump as if startled, then turn, and in the half-light he thought he saw a smile under the mustache.

"I sorry, Cyan," the boy said. Sabin began walking towards them, slowly.

Cyan ruffled Gau's hair. "No need, lad. You gave no offense and did no harm."

"No, that was me," Sabin said, now that he was close enough to be heard without shouting. "I'm sorry, Cyan. I didn't realize how much it'd bother you. I shouldn't have dragged you into town."

"It was— not done with ill-will," the older man said, stiffly. "I might have explained more."

"I just thought, you know, it's a happy time."

"A busy time, garish and loud. In Doma we may not exchange gifts or hold parties as a custom, but our New Year is still a... special time, a significant... we spend it with our families and closest friends, and in meditation or prayer."

"And you're in no mood for celebration as frivolous as this," Sabin offered, but softly, hoping Cyan wouldn't feel the need to challenge or agree.

"It is... hard, to see all these families so happy now. Even knowing that many of them have lost as well. But I suppose they hold to the traditions for comfort, and to try to forget for a time."

"It's hope, I think," Sabin said. "Lighting candles on the darkest night of the year."

"In Doma... My Owain would have been twelve this year past, and there was a special rite at the closing of the year for the boys who'd reached that age," Cyan said. "When last I saw him he was much the age of that older boy, and it seems but yesterday he was the size of the younger, the one who nearly fell."

Sabin felt his eyes prickle with tears. He looked down to hide them, and saw that Gau was crouching in the snow, leaning slightly against Cyan's leg. Cyan looked down too, and rested a hand on Gau's head. "Come now, lad, we can't have thee sitting on the ground on a night cold as this," he scolded, his voice brisk, but a bit gruff with his own emotion. "Snow melts, my boy, get up."

The wild boy stood, then yelped as he must have noticed melted snow somewhere on or in his clothes. "Cold!"

"That was my point, lad."

"Cyan," Sabin began, then cleared his throat. "Cyan, I'm so sorry."

The knight bowed his head, but didn't speak until they were nearly to the gates of the park. "I thank you, Sir Sabin," he said then, looking over at the younger man for only a moment. Sabin opened his mouth to speak but realized there was nothing else he could say; he bowed his head, then stopped, and as Cyan turned, bowed lower, not crisp enough – Duncan would have smacked him – but Cyan returned it, and then extended his right hand to shake. Sabin bit his lips and blinked hard as they shook hands, and he was able to hold off until he had a chance to fall behind the others before he reached up to wipe his eyes with his gloves.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: My posting and writing plans were somewhat thrown off by festive illness, so no, this isn't complete.

Chapter Seven

Left alone, Locke and Terra made first for the toy store. There was a cart in front of it, being loaded as they approached; they climbed into the cart bed as Locke pointed out the contents of packages he could remember and showed her the ones he could open without disaster. She carefully unlatched the music box and opened it up, jumping slightly as it began playing its tinny melody, the little wooden ballerina rotating.

"Ooh, this is neat! Locke, where did you get this?"

"Just in the toy store."

"Can it shut off?"

He reached around her and gently closed the lid. She opened it again, and smiled as it started back up. "It's meant to be a jewelry box," he said. She took off an earring, laid it inside, closed it, then opened it again, taking the earring back out. "It's for you," he added, on impulse.

"For me? Really?" She beamed at him.

"Absolutely!" He'd actually thought it was a gift for one of her daughters, but she was so happy with it. "Happy Yule," he added, and grinned at her. She smiled at him, and then shut the box and opened it again to hear the music once more.

They finally bailed off the cart and set off down the busy street, Locke wondering what else he could get her; he sort of felt she needed a gift that had been meant for her, but nothing else seemed to delight her quite as much as the music box had. He bought her some new hair ribbons, though, and a scarf she liked, and she proceeded to buy him a pair of gloves from the same stall. "Should I get things for everyone else?" she asked him.

"I... don't know. I hadn't planned to, but I think Sabin was buying stuff for Edgar."

"I need to get something for Celes," she decided.

"I thought she didn't celebrate anything like Yule?"

"Everybody likes presents," she declared, and hauled him into a clothing store, where they decided on a coat – "All she wears is that cape, and I know she says she doesn't feel the cold but I still don't think that's much fun," she said – and sized it by selecting something a bit large on Terra, long in the sleeves and just slightly too broad in the shoulders. White, Terra had declared, but the closest they could come was a cream-colored wool. She seemed happy, though, as the clerk wrapped it up for them. They each paid half. "Edgar, too," she said. "He's done so much for me."

"Something with lots of little gears," Locke suggested.

"A pocketwatch?" And they were off again.

After the watch they'd intended to go back to the inn, but they made a wrong turning somewhere along the way and ended up on a quiet residential street, shuffling through untouched snow, with more drifting down as they walked. "Lucky bastards," Locke said. "People who don't want to go out if they don't have to, and others who were at work when the snow started to fall and haven't come home yet."

"Oh," she said. In the dark, light spilled from some of the windows, yellow on the blue-tinged nighttime snow. "Should we turn back?"

"I guess so," he said, but she cast another longing glance down the street. "Terra?" he asked, gently. Her hood had been pushed back once they got out of the shopping crush, and he watched a snowflake settle in her hair.

"I was just... thinking about home," she said, turning back to him, and didn't quite manage to smile.

"Oh," he said. Nothing could have been further from his mind than smiling.

"I think... I didn't want you to know because you got so mad when Strago said that, but I wanted to know what happens when people die, and Cyan said there's another world, so at least it's not like you're totally gone, right? Or is it only for people from Doma? "

"That's... Terra, I wasn't mad at you, I was— I was mad _because_ of you. On your behalf. Not really Strago's fault, but— I wasn't going to snap at you for asking something like that." He'd just feel like he'd been punched in the chest. "You seemed so calm about it, before."

"I was... It's... it doesn't matter," she said. "Whatever we have to do to kill Kefka is worth it."

Her hair was green as an early leaf, and he reached up to brush away some of the snow caught in it. She looked up just then, her blue-gray eyes meeting his, and his heart seized. He knew how loss felt, and he wasn't sure he could bear losing her too. "Terra..."

"Any of us could die just in fighting him," she went on, unheeding, her arms wrapping around herself. "None of us have any guarantees."

_She's scared too,_ he thought, and he wanted to gather her into his arms, but he just tugged the hood up over her head and made himself smile. "I think Strago's reaching. We've never killed any gods before. We don't know what'll happen. And besides, you're half human too – that has to count."

"I guess that's true," she said, her eyes shining suspiciously. His chest hurt.

"And this no guarantees stuff, I don't want to hear any of that from you."

"But—"

"It just sounds like you're giving up before we've even started. Promise me you won't do that."

"I couldn't give up, Locke. There's so much— I don't _want_ to die."

"Good," he said, softly, his voice thick. A long moment passed as he tried to compose himself, and she waved out and behind her, indicating the street, the row of glowing store windows at the end of it. They began walking again, hands stuffed into pockets. "Terra," he said. "Do you remember, back when we were staying in the Returner headquarters in the mountains? You said you didn't have anyone really important to you..."

"And you said I had people who cared about me."

"You always have. Just... just remember that, okay?"

"I will. I do." She stopped, so he did too, and brushed his gloved fingers over her cheek.

"You have me," he said. "You have all of us. Don't forget."

* * *

The sky was just beginning to show early traces of sunset when Setzer thought to go on deck. He'd been relishing his solitude; he'd given the half-dozen attendants leave to visit town as they saw fit, and they'd all promptly deserted him, so he had leisure to play some of his opera cylinders at top volume in the lounge and disturb no one. It had been ages since he'd had an airship to himself, longer still since it had been this one. He and Daryl used to live in it for days on end when they could both get away, just the two of them. Now he used the solitude to listen to recordings – some of Maria, though it was odd the way he disassociated the voice from the woman.

He'd been on the verge of marrying her. The courtship had been a whirlwind whim – divorce was easy in Jidoor, so it was also a reversible whim as well – and the abduction a carefully planned piece of drama; they'd given it more thought than anything else in their relationship. She'd wanted to make a splash with their elopement, which was apparently why she'd informed no one of the plan, and inadvertently introduced him to Celes and a life of revolutionary fervor. Well, a few months of revolutionary fervor. He hadn't had another chance to see Maria until after the world ended; he'd straggled into Jidoor, set up camp in the ruins of his manor house north of town, and convinced her to have dinner with him so he could explain. She'd agreed, apparently solely so that she could throw wine in his face in the middle of the finest restaurant in the city. She still had a beautiful voice, though.

But the phonograph cylinders ran out in the end, and the room was getting a bit stuffy, so he climbed back onto deck, and glanced out over faintly pink-tinted snow to notice a single set of footprints going the opposite direction from the others. He could make a decent guess as to whose feet those were, but there was some curiosity, as well. After going back to find his gloves and coat, he was soon walking west as well, into what little sunset could be seen through the thick clouds, and then into the trees. Snow dropped into his collar, birds startled away at his approach, and just as he was beginning to despair of finding her in the wood, he began to see light and clear ground ahead.

She was standing at the edge of a bluff, arms folded, hair and cloak blowing gently around her from behind, though the wind was less punishing here with the trees to break it. "Celes?" he called. He saw snow in her hair, but as she turned into the wind to face him, it blew away.

"I used to stand at attention for— I think hours sometimes. It certainly felt that way," she said. "I wanted to see if I still had it in me, that discipline. And I wanted to be alone."

"Are you all right?"

"It's odd," she said, flexing her fingers before her. Her hands were bare. "I don't normally feel the cold."

"That doesn't mean you're immune to it," he said.

"No. That's what's odd – my fingers hurt, even though I've been wearing my gloves. I took them off to warm my hands, but then they get cold again."

He fumbled with the buttons of his overcoat, jerked off his gloves in frustration, then fianlly got the buttons undone. He swept it around her shoulders, surprised she was allowing it, and buttoned it at her throat. She reached up to adjust the collar, and when he was done he caught her hand, marvelling at the chill of her fingers. He reached for her other hand, and brought them together between his.

"I suppose I'm not," she said, softly. "I was supposed to be ice, in Vector, with all that that means. Cold and calculating, ice princess... frigid. I don't even remember caring about the presumption, the... all the assumptions being made about me. About what I ought to be."

Her hands were warming between his, and he felt words swelling in him, but she drew breath to speak again. "Locke held my hands too, when he freed me in South Figaro. Chafing my hands back to life – I'd been chained up. I— wasn't used to being touched." She lapsed into silence for a moment. "I always seem to let someone save me."

"There's no shame in it." He wasn't sure he followed the train of thought there, but he realized a thought he'd dismissed when he first saw where she was standing. "That cliff?"

"On the island where Cid cared for me, there was a cliff, steeper than this, overlooking the sea. I threw myself from it after he died."

He surprised himself by letting go her hands, taking her in his arms so suddenly she didn't stop him. She surprised him by allowing it. She was tense in his arms as a drawn bow; he could feel it through the coat and cloak, and he could feel her hands, still pressed together, against his chest, but she didn't shove him away.

"Don't think like this," he said. "We need you, Celes. I need you." He couldn't see her face, and that was the only reason he could keep speaking. "If it weren't for you I'd still be drowning myself in a bottle in Kohlingen, I'd never have faced Daryl's death, I'd never— I may have been trying to bluff when I asked you to marry me but it was the wisest dare I ever made. I—" He felt her indrawn breath. "I'm sorry. Just... please don't."

"I did say I always let someone save me in the end," she said. He felt her lower her head to his shoulder. "I was thinking of the way it felt," she said, barely above a whisper. "Almost exhilarating, but— I gave up control just as I did when the guards came. Love's like that too, isn't it? Turning over your fate to someone else, whether or not they even know it."

"They do call it falling," he said. He could kill Locke Cole with his bare hands, he thought. Cheerfully.

"I was thinking about the future, too," she said. "I've never once had to think about what I'd do with my life, before."

"You have a remarkable singing voice," he said. "When I heard you, I thought Maria was having a bad night, but as you weren't a professional singer and only had a few days to prepare..."

"It's not the way I want to live my life— either trying to conceal my past or using it for notoriety, and living by my looks and voice."

"What were you considering, then?"

"I didn't choose the military, but it seems I'm suited for it – or maybe my upbringing makes me unsuited to anything else. But I think I'll end up offering my services— somewhere. In what used to be the Empire, if I could, I feel it's owed, but I doubt anyone there would have me. I was hardly a well-loved military governor."

"So it wasn't despair," he said. He wondered if Locke had some place in her plans, if she imagined some other future she didn't mention.

"I wasn't thinking of throwing myself off, Setzer, I was just thinking of the time I did."

"Forgive me for not seeing the distinction," he retorted.

"I won't, thank you," she retorted with some asperity. "There is— guilt," she admitted, after a moment. "In a way I miss being cold, and being certain. I truly thought the Empire's goal was right, that we offered something better for our subject territories than they had – technology, order, all of that. I didn't think of their casualties as people, just as enemies and collateral damage, marks on a tally sheet. But Kefka was gaining influence and power, and he got control of Terra— it was like a nightmare, evertyhing was wrong and no one was acting as if it was."

He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her speak this much at a stretch. "You and Terra were friends, weren't you?"

"Almost like sisters. Hair-pulling squabbles and all, when we were younger. She doesn't remember." He knew, but he was too glad she was speaking to utter the sarcasm. "When I think of what Strago said—"

"It's not certain," he said. "The odds may not be good, but we don't know the rules to this game yet."

"Yes, but—"

"She knows," he said, and pulled back so he could look in her face. "Don't feel guilty for forcing her into this unless she decides she can't deal with the possibilities. Let her choose."

"It's all so unfair," she said, quietly.

He just nodded, and she pulled from his arms after a moment to shrug out of the coat and offer it to him. At his initial resistance she shoved it into his hands and knelt to retrieve his gloves, and then her own, half-covered by snow. She offered his to him, and he shook his head – he might want the coat back, but he could retain some gallantry. "If they're not too cold or wet, you can wear them," he said. "Your own will be frozen, and I have pockets." She tried them on, and apparently found them sufficient, since she kept them. After a moment's thought he unwound the silk muffler he'd been wearing and looped it around her neck.

When he was done she began walking toward the airship, not looking back at him. He followed, his chest and arms chilled now where they'd been in contact with her warmth. The silence was broken only by the crunch of their boots in the nearly-undisturbed snow. Their old footprints were beginning to be obscured now. He sped his pace for a few seconds, caught up to her, and said "Celes, you're not cold at all. My chest is freezing now from the cold."

She gave him a sidelong look, then pulled up short at the edge of the trees. "Setzer." He halted, turning back to face her. "What you said, about your feelings..."

"I'd just like to see you in that Maria dress again," he said.

Her expression was a marvel – astonishment, her jaw actually dropped, and then irritation and amusement in equal measure. "You bastard," she said, but she sounded as if she might laugh. "I should have known you weren't capable of seriousness."

Her cheeks were pink, but he thought it was the cold. Her golden hair was windblown, she was within an ace of laughing, and he didn't think he'd ever seen her more beautiful. He was afraid his whole soul was in his eyes, even more than he'd already shown, but he still said "Not for a moment, I'm afraid."

She studied him for a moment in the last of the light. "Let's go home," she said at last, and turned to lead the way.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

When they returned to the parlor of the Figaro suite at the Blue Lion, Strago let himself into the room, blinked, and then backed out and shut the door.

"What?" Edgar asked, looking confused.

"Edgar, I'm sorry, but can you wait in the pub for a moment?"

"I suppose so..."

When the king was safely departed, Strago opened the door.

He'd recognized the back of the head, somehow; the shoulders, the shade of the mouse-brown hair, shaggy now, rather than the matted but once stylishly long mane he'd had the first time Strago saw him, stretched out on Charis's sofa in muddy clothes, sweaty and ill, or the neatly-cropped style he'd worn after they had to cut his hair off during the fever. And then there was the portrait, on a tiny canvas, pensive and older than the mere boy he'd known. There was a long, thin scar down the side of the face, and when he turned his head, he was pale, much more than Strago remembered. But then, he would be. And somehow for all that he hadn't changed.

"Face _forward!_" Relm snapped, and Clyde's head obediently swivelled back into position. Relm got up and clambered onto the arm of the chair to arrange him just so. It was only as she jumped back down, rattling the floorboards, that Strago found his voice.

"Are you out of your _mind?_" he yelped.

"Oh, please. It's canvas. And he's just a big softie at heart," Relm said, rolling her eyes, and Strago realized she thought he'd meant her; that she was in danger with the assassin, that she at least shouldn't be posing him like a barber shaving a man. "Like that adorable puppy of his!" she added, in the usual sugary tones she usually used for the dog. Strago heard a sigh. From Shadow, he realized.

"Oh, come on, nobody in here needs to think he's a killer beast. He scares people plenty, you saw that clerk in the store! Mandibles of death!"

"What...?" Strago said, completely mystified now.

"I escorted her to town, and she's punishing me for my sins."

"Well, you got a lot of 'em," she retorted, and touched up the scar.

"Can I stay, then?" Strago asked. "These old bones need a rest."

"Sure, whatever," Relm said.

"There's a chair near the fire," Clyde added.

"No, I... think I want to see her paint. Normally it's too dangerous."

"Suit yourself," Relm said, and Strago sank, creaking, onto a footstool, leaning more heavily on his stick than he had a year before, before he'd thought she was dead and he'd lived all undeserving.

Clyde had wanted to conceal his identity from Relm. After the fire, when the others all lay unconscious, Strago had awakened to the familiar shock of magical healing, and found Clyde, mask tugged down to his chin, standing over him. _She will never know. Are we agreed?_ Those were the only words they'd exchanged directly since Clyde left Thamasa; Strago had simply nodded, Clyde had tugged the mask back up, and nothing more needed to pass between them, or should.

He wanted to conceal his identity in general, for reasons of his own. Shadow, the assassin, had done far more than a young man in the thieving duo Shadow had ever intended, but Strago knew there was more than just a string of train heists that made him bury his old life, and that he'd never know the details.

It was interesting, though, to watch the painting take shape under Relm's brush, the face acquiring definition and clearer expression, the hair molded from a blob into his real hair, shaggy and brown. The background was loosely indicated already, the rough paint outlines of chairs and wall, and she detailed those as she watched. He wasn't sure it was usual to work so quickly, he realized she could probably use training and refinement, but she was also his granddaughter and by his lights the finest artist in the world.

Finally, though, the lure of the fire was too strong, and he creaked over to it. That was the worst part of getting old; you hurt all over, and you could vaguely remember a time when you didn't, so you really felt the injustice. But the fire was warm, and the armchair was comfortable. Very comfortable.

"You have to buy him a drink, too," Relm was saying.

"Wha?"

"You were asleep!"

"Resting my eyes!"

"With fake snoring noises?"

"Yes!" he snapped, and she started laughing.

"Shadow," she said, through her giggles. "You have to buy him a drink."

"I do?"

"I told him you would."

"Not necessary," Clyde said, but he was wearing the mask again. Relm seemed to be wrapping her little canvas up in some cloth.

"No, I want to. To thank you for keeping an eye on her. And settle your nerves after hours with the brat," he added, with some affection. "Relm, is it dry enough for that?"

"You were 'resting' for a long-ass time, old man. Me and Shadow were plotting your death so I could inherit all your money."

"Uh huh."

"Don't worry, she couldn't afford me," Shadow said.

"I'm gonna go see if Edgar will get me drunk," Relm said, propping her bundle against the wall and scooting out the door. After it clicked shut behind her, there was silence.

"I'd order something for old times' sake, but I doubt they'd have that amber ale Jeren used to brew," Shadow said.

"Closest thing they have, I guess," Strago said after a moment, staring into the flames. "He died, three winters after you left." Silence, from Shadow. "Thank you," Strago said, after a moment.

"I haven't ordered it yet."

"I meant for spending time with Relm."

"Do you think she ought to know?" Shadow was standing, arms crossed as usual, wholly unreadable.

"I don't know anymore. Probably. Do you think you might tell her?"

"I'll go order the drinks," Shadow said, and left Strago alone for the moment, feeling strangely peaceful, despite the unanswered question, as he watched the fire.

* * *

When Relm stepped out of the room into the hall, she saw darkness outside the windows. She turned down the hallway, took the stairs at a gallop, and burst into the pub with her sketchbook under her arm to see no one she knew at all. Not that that mattered. She strutted into the room, too cool to look around, until a sharp whistle cut through the noise.

She looked over – along with half the pub, she saw – and found Sabin gesturing her over. Gau had his fingers in his mouth, so he must have whistled, and Cyan was hunched over a glass of something. She walked over, much less cocky now with all those eyes on her, but she recovered enough to whap her sketchbook down on the table when she got there.

"What was that about, huh?" she demanded. "Scoot," she added, to Edgar, who slid over a fraction. Good enough – she squeezed in next to him.

"You no looking," Gau said.

"So?" She elbowed Edgar in the side. "I said scoot. Or I'll draw you."

"You always threaten that, but I think you're bluffing," Edgar said, which meant, of course, that she had to dig out pen and ink from her bag and produce a tiny caricature of him that blew a kiss to the waitress and scared her away for, as it happened, several hours. She grinned and scribbled it out, then yelped and started giggling as Edgar attempted to pick her up bodily and pass her into a corner of the booth. He gave up the attempt, and she clambered over him and Sabin into the corner. The brothers passed her inkwell and pen to her, and she arranged herself with the aid of elbows to the sides of Cyan and Sabin on either side of her.

"Apparently _you_ weren't hungry, Relm," Edgar said, aggrieved, "but the rest of us intended to order a meal. Would you like something to drink, as you clearly have no interest in food?"

"Yes! Hot chocolate please. Ooh, and could you order me an omelette? I want a cheese omelette."

Edgar shook his head and stood, and she watched for a bit as he spoke to someone behind the bar – Shadow was there too, taking a couple of bottles someone gave him – then settled back in her corner with her feet on the seat, so she could kick Sabin if he tried to reclaim any territory, and tried practice sketches in pencil of Gau and Sabin and Cyan. They went back to talking. Cyan grumbled something about "ostentatious joy," whatever that meant, but he sort of smiled at something Sabin said. She kept trying to draw him; she didn't understand why he tried to look so crabby so much of the time, but it was good practice.

"Don't you ever want to show it when you're happy?" Sabin asked him.

"I suppose I might. But seldom."

Edgar returned, and she drew him, too, but got bored on the flowy lines for his hair and turned her attention to the pub itself. What she was noticing, despite the show of joy Cyan talked about, was that everyone seemed subdued, only a little less so than they'd been when she ended up here not long after the world broke. Most of the people she'd passed on the street had black armbands at least, and some wore heavier mourning, even as they also had sprigs of holly in their lapels or arms full of packages. Plenty of people looked happy enough, and the shops were plenty crowded, but some of the things on the in the windows looked faded, or dusty, or old; like they weren't bothering to keep things up, much, or didn't have anything new to put out to draw people in. She was pretty sure some stores had the same window displays they'd had the year before, when she was living on the streets here. But maybe that was just Nikeah; she'd never been here before the Fall. Things had been different back home. They didn't have so much _stuff,_ for one thing, or so many stores.

She was scanning the pub crowd for interesting, stationary people she could draw, when she saw Locke and Terra come in, stamping snow off their boots and shaking it off their coats in the vestibule. Locke was looking around the room, and Edgar waved him over. She drew the two of them as they slid in on the other side of the booth, heaving coats into the corner and displacing Gau, who'd been curled up on the seat. They interested her; she thought fascinating drama was going on with Celes and Locke, though Locke didn't really seem to be aware of it, and he spent a lot of time with Terra, while Sabin had told her Setzer wanted Celes to marry him, and Edgar flirted with both the women, and, really, everyone except her. She might not know what was going on but that didn't mean she couldn't snoop until she did.

Food came, and Relm attacked her omelette, ate half of it, slurped her hot chocolate and returned to her sketchbook. This time she went to work with inkwell and brush, creating little moogles and deformed chocobos – she had a hard time with them, so she needed the practice – and set them marching over the edge of her sketchbook, down her knees and onto the table, where the moogles trekked over sandwiches and steaks, and menaced Locke's drink with spears. The chocobos, looking all wrong, tended to topple over, but a few worked out all right and one galloped around the edge of the table. The others ignored her and her moogles, or at least they were pretending to, and she grinned and hummed to herself contentedly. She was free to draw right now, or at least, no one was stopping her; she'd had her chance at seeing Shadow's face, so she'd seen something no one else had (except Gramps, but that couldn't be helped, and besides, she thought they knew each other already;) and she was inside, warm and dry, on a cold, icky night.

"Relm?" someone asked, and she looked up with a start. Everyone was watching her.

"Yes?"

"Moogles are swimming in my soup," Locke said.

"Aw! They are! That's so cute!" She hadn't set them to do anything like that, so they were showing some initiative. Terra burst into giggles, and Relm grinned broadly at her.

"Relm..." Locke said, threatening, and she sighed and flipped the page over. The moogles faded out, and she paused with her pen poised over the inkwell.

"Is anyone going back to the airship tonight?" she asked.

"With a good will!" Cyan exploded. "I said before I am weary of this town."

"I have business in town tomorrow," Edgar said. "I don't know about anyone else."

"I want to stay wherever the most people are," she said. "More of you to draw. And annoy. I was just wondering."

"I go Cyan," Gau said.

"So it's just Setzer and Celes holding down the fort?" Edgar said. "Pity I can't be a fly on the wall for that."

"Do you think she'll be all right?" Locke said. "I mean, I'm sure she could break his arms if she needed to, but it might be kind of upsetting to need to."

"I'm sure Setzer has good survival instincts," Edgar said. "Though if you want to rush to her rescue, I'm sure she'd appreciate it. Possibly."

"Why don't we go back, Locke?" Terra said. "I want to give her that coat, and I want to look at all the toys you bought when they're not in the middle of the street, and I need to pay you back—"

"Don't worry about that," he interrupted, hastily. "Yeah, I'm ready to go, since my soup's been claimed by the moogles."

"They don't have cooties," Relm scoffed. "They aren't even _real._"

"Yeah, well..."

The food was mostly gone, though, and now Gau was fidgeting. Terra stood, and Locke helped her on with her coat. "I guess it's just us, big brother," Sabin said.

"Shadow and Gramps might be staying here," Relm said. "I don't know."

They did, in the end. It was Relm, Cyan, Gau, Locke and Terra on the rented wagon, shivering as they moved slowly back to the airship in the night, quiet again and somehow subdued, even Relm and Gau. Cyan took the reins, their carter gone home for the night; Locke and Terra walked together, speaking a little, too quietly for Relm to hear. Cyan seemed at peace now, Gau quiet and sleepy, and Locke and Terra seemed less happy, more serious, though she thought she heard quiet laughter once. Relm gave up on eavesdropping to draw trees and snow, and wish for paint.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Celes and Setzer had walked back to the airship in comfortable silence amid the gathering dark. She'd wanted to stay on deck once they were back aboard, but he cajoled her into warming up first, and she consented without much fuss.

Belowdecks, the whole airship smelled delicious, and in out of the wind it was warm; the atmosphere was nothing like any home she'd ever known except the airship itself, but the word that came to mind to describe it was still "home." Homelike. Cozy, though that hardly applied to something the size of the Falcon.

"I didn't realize you cooked," she said, discarding the gloves and cloak to warm her hands over a brazier.

"I don't," he called down, from the upper level. A moment later he appeared on the stairs. "I gave the cook the day off and she left this for us."

"Setzer, I always meant to ask," she began.

"I'm not an albino, just prematurely silver." She quirked a brow at him. "Oh, that wasn't it?"

"Such an odd thing to be vain about," she said. "I meant the staff. Why hire servants? It made sense to have them on the Blackjack, since you used it as a casino, but this one-" She'd been about to say _is a small racing craft._ "It's smaller. We could fend for ourselves easily enough."

He smiled ruefully and flopped down on the settee. "I already employed them," he said. "They worked at my villa in Jidoor before it was levelled in the Fall. I spent some time in the ruins of it before I wandered up to Kohlingen, and I'd given them permission to shelter there as long as they needed. When we stopped there after finding Cyan I checked on them, and hired the ones who'd hung on that long. I think it had less to do with personal loyalty than wanting severance pay, but they did need positions, and I don't really care to cook for myself."

She wasn't sure how to respond; it sounded so much like the young lord providing for his serfs, or some such. She'd grown up with servants, but had never been in a position to hire them. "It was good of you to provide for them," she said, a bit stiffly, after a moment.

"Oh, no, it's not- you make it sound like they're loyal family retainers," he said. "As if they'd looked after me in the nursery. Nothing like that. A few of them have looked after me since I was with Daryl, I suppose, but that's the extent of it."

"Setzer? Can I ask- how long ago was that?"

"It's been... nearly three years, now. Two years since the wreckage was found."

"The wreckage," she said, and winced as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

"I know," he said. "I wanted to hold onto hope more than you could imagine. But it had been nearly a year, and we combed that island and all the surrounding ones. All they ever found was what they found close to the wreck itself - some scraps of fabric, and bones. Scattered." She opened her mouth, then closed it again. "I try to think she died quickly, a broken neck, perhaps. But we were never going to know with the evidence that was left. No one wanted to mention starvation around me." He looked up from his hands, finally. "I don't like to discuss it," he said. "For obvious reasons."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I suppose it's best to try to face it. But if you wondered why I was drinking so heavily in Kohlingen, it was because I started having nightmares again after the Blackjack crashed," he said. "Drink meant I could sleep deeply enough I might miss them."

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"Why? You've done nothing. If anything, I'm grateful I can speak of her again. Not of her death, ideally..."

"I'm still sorry."

"So am I," he said, after a moment. "I meant it, though. I hadn't spoken of her since the funeral, until I led you and the twins into the tomb. I suppose I made glancing reference to her once when talking to Terra, but it wasn't the same as telling someone about her. And it made it easier to remember her as she was, somehow." He chuckled, a dry sound she took a moment to identify as laughter. "She hated that place," he said. "The only time I ever saw her admit to fear was when she told me about going down into it to see her grandfather laid to rest, and then she immediately started defending herself. 'I was _eight!_' She didn't sound much older than eight when she got upset like that." He was smiling ruefully. "I probably should have asked that the remains be laid elsewhere, but it seemed to mean so much to her parents. And I wasn't her husband; they wouldn't have seen any real reason not to overrule me."

"Did they know how much she meant to you?" Celes asked, softly.

"They knew we were together," he said. "I barely knew them, though. One formal meal, with Daryl acting the whole time like she was auditioning for a role. I probably was, too, but it was so striking with her; later I saw them talking to her privately, when they didn't know I'd come back into the room, and she seemed at ease, but with me around..."

"It can be like... there are two of you, and you don't know which one to be," she said, thinking of her mother watching her at magitek drills, once, or the Emperor looking out of place in their sitting room.

"I see," he said, and she looked down when their eyes met. She didn't look up until she heard his footsteps, moving away from her; he seemed to be pouring a glass of wine. "You probably thought I sounded a bit lordly, talking about the servants earlier. I notice it a bit myself - I didn't grow up with them, or with any servants. When my parents finally hired a housekeeper, when I was twelve, my mother always said 'please' and 'thank you' to her."

"Really?" She didn't question the change in subject - his reasons were obvious enough. "I never realized, but I know nothing about your earlier life."

"I nearly said the same thing of you a moment ago," he said.

"There's not much 'earlier' to discuss," she said. "I'm only nineteen."

"Nineteen? You're joking."

"What? No. How old did you take me for?"

"I don't know. Twenty-five, or in that vicinity. You're no older than Terra!"

"A bit younger, by her official birthday, though I'm not sure how reliable that date is. She was definitely born earlier, though. Is it that surprising?"

"A bit. I suppose responsibility has that effect, though."

"Yes, crow's feet and early gray."

"Hardly," he scoffed, and then she lifted her head at the sound of footsteps above.

"I was about to offer you food of some sort," he said, looking up as well. "But you seem to have your attention elsewhere."

"I need to go speak to Terra," Celes said. "If she didn't stay in town. Or if she did, for that matter. I don't want to sleep on it. It was what I said I needed to do in the first place, and I was right the first time."

"The stew will wait," he said. "It's in the nature of stew, isn't it?"

She flashed him a distracted smile and was gone.

.

* * *

.

Gau and Relm were the first ones up the side of the ship. As they scrambled up, Cyan called after them "The hold, remember," though neither gave any obvious sign that they'd heard. The ship had a cargo entrance that could only be opened from inside; it didn't hold much, but their purchases would fit.

"I would prefer to return this cart tonight if the weather permits," the knight said, to no one in particular.

"It looks clear," Locke replied, and Terra looked up at the stars as if on cue, then back down, feeling a bit foolish. Cyan had done the same, though, and she smiled a bit to herself as she looked up again, this time just staring at the cool, distant light. Katarin used to complain about the constellations - "does that look like a stag to you?" - but she'd always been able to see the shape once it was pointed out to her, and to see how that square with a triangle a bit up from it could, in a way, look like a stag.

"Let's go help them," Locke said, startling her out of her reverie. "The hold door can be a bit stiff."

"Okay," she said, but she lingered in the snow a moment as Locke began climbing. Cyan, too, seemed to be watching the stars.

"I hope I have given no offense," he said. "This is not a holy day I honor."

"I don't really know anything about it," she said. "I don't even remember - I grew up in Vector, I guess. Celes said at Midwinter everyone goes out and lights candles and leaves them at the graves of their family's dead, but I don't remember it. I didn't have a family anyway."

"At this time of year, or at midwinter for the South?" he asked. She shrugged. "Worthier than fighting crowds for the privilege of buying trinkets, at any rate," he said. "But I should not detain you."

"I guess so," she said, and took to the ladder, gripping it carefully with her gloved hands. Below, she heard the creak and groan of the hold door opening, but Cyan never let her carry heavy things - or Celes, though he was a lot more brusque when he shooed her away, usually - so she didn't backtrack to help him.

When Terra climbed over the railing of the ship, Celes was waiting for her, apparently talking to Locke, but they broke off at the sight of her.

"I'll leave you two to talk," Locke said. "They might need help loading into the hold."

"Be sure to pull Celes's gift out," Terra said. "Celes, we got a gift for you, but it's down below-"

"Terra, I'm so sorry."

"Why? What for?"

"I had no idea... Setzer told me. If Strago's right-"

"It's not certain," Terra said, but it almost sounded like a question. "I might be fine."

"I heard that," Locke called, from the hatch. "Don't forget."

"I _will_ be fine," Terra said, louder, smiling slightly, and he resumed his descent. "I promised him," she said, her voice lowering. "That I wasn't going to give up or act like it was hopeless, I mean."

"Good," Celes said, though a part of her wanted to ask _what good will that do?_ It might make the two of them feel better, at least for a time. "I meant it, though."

Terra shook her head. "You didn't know, and besides, this way is better. I'd rather face it. I'd rather know, than just... sit around waiting for whatever happens. Or have it just strike out of the blue when I didn't even know. And if I'm going to die, I'd rather... it should be... at least I'd have done something worthwhile," she said, but her voice faltered, and she wrapped her arms around herself again.

"Terra..." Celes said, her throat tightening.

"I don't want to die, though," she said, looking down, her voice barely above a whisper.

"None of us want that," Celes said, not much louder. "We all want you to survive."

Terra looked up at her, and after a moment's hesitation, Celes put her arms around her old friend, awkwardly. Terra had always been the one to give hugs, and gifts, start games and suggest plans. Terra had been the one who led the way, the first part of the way; Celes had been the one to take over afterwards, to make the rules for the games Terra half-created, ask directions home, divide up the loot.

She felt Terra's arms go around her, now, tentative. "Celes?" she asked, her voice sounding stronger. "I've been wondering, if- did we know each other? You know, before... everything?"

Her throat felt constricted again. How long had it been since she last cried? How old had she been? "Yes," she barely managed.

"Are you all right?" Terra asked, pulling back to look at her.

Celes ducked her head, letting her hair fall around her face. She was fine. She pulled her composure around her again - a sigh, a few breaths until they felt even, a moment to clear her thoughts and, with luck, allow her voice to steady - and said "We were friends from childhood. Since we were seven years old."

Terra looked crestfallen. "And I don't even- Celes, _I'm_ sorry."

"I knew you'd lost your memory, Terra. Locke mentioned it before we ever reached Narshe. It's not your fault."

"But it's so... It's not fair!"

"I know," she said, thinking of Kefka, of that sham of a trial, condemning Terra for sabotaging the lab. It hadn't been a setup, or a scapegoating, not deliberately. It had been wild magic, beyond anyone's control, something between an accident and an act of the gods. "None of it has been fair."

"Will you tell me about it?" she asked.

"About what?"

"Our childhood? Stuff we did. I don't know. Whatever you remember. Everything."

"Of course I will." And on impulse, she added, "After we beat Kefka?"

It was the right thing to say, apparently, because Terra's face lit with a smile that Celes hadn't seen in years, one that showed how hard she'd been trying to seem untroubled earlier, and Celes could feel the answering smile on her own face. "Let's go down below where it's warm," was all she said, and Celes followed her, still feeling the smile on her face like traces of warmth.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Setzer had drifted down to the hold shortly after Celes left. From Cyan, he learned of everyone's plans - who was staying in town, Cyan's intention of taking the cart back to town and then returning to the ship. He chased Gau and Relm out of the hold, where they were clambering over packages and trying to determine which might be meant for them, and sent them off to eat if they wanted any. As he and Cyan closed up the cargo hold, he noted Celes and Terra's voices on the deck, indistinct. They came belowdecks, and he went above, to spend some time alone with the ship. He watched the cart departing, and fussed over his navigational instruments, mostly for something to do. They were meant to stand all extremes of weather - even though the Falcon he'd created for the tomb had never been intended to fly, he'd wanted a perfect replica of the ship Daryl had loved.

Finally, though, the cold began to seep into his bones, and he returned belowdecks, shivering. Gau was curled up in an armchair, shoes discarded on the floor in front of him, next to an empty bowl. Clearly, either Celes had directed them to the food or they'd found it without assistance. He didn't see Relm, but he did see a translucent squirrel, probably of charcoal, on the railing ahead of him. Terra and Celes were sitting on the couch together, speaking quietly. Mog was curled up at Terra's side, in much the same position as Gau, and apparently sleeping peacefully. There was no sign of the yeti. And Locke was on the same upper level as he was, leaning against a wall, hands in his pockets, a small stack of parcels at his feet. He lifted one hand in greeting, and Setzer approached him.

"I think we'll be leaving tomorrow morning, early, and leave Terra in Mobliz. Beyond that, I'm not certain."

"Yeah, that's what I figured." The thief sighed. "You and Celes get along okay?"

He tried not to bristle. Somewhere, some man who'd adored Maria as she deserved and expected had roundly cursed the name of Gabbiani. The thief was still dealing with a loss. It wasn't entirely his fault if he wasn't treating Celes the way Setzer would have. "She tried to give herself frostbite. I don't believe I had anything to do with it." He considered. "No, I may have. She was one of the only ones to miss out on Strago's bombshell. When I mentioned it, she went for a walk."

"At least you weren't harassing her," Locke said, then looked immediately as if he'd had second thoughts about his words.

"Was it you or Edgar who suspected that?" Setzer was more amused than offended. Typical that Edgar or someone close to him would jump to that conclusion.

"I guess a bit of both."

Setzer considered the possibility a moment, and decided to hazard a guess. "You do realize that Maria and I were colluding on the abduction?"

"No. You were? This would have been good information to have, Setzer."

"I thought that surely I'd mentioned it. I'll tell you all about Maria, then. At least, as much as a gentleman can. But I'd like a drink to take some of the chill off."

"I could get behind that."

Setzer led the way down to the main floor. "I hope we're not intruding," he called, softly, mostly to warn Celes and Terra they were approaching. He heard a snore from Gau.

"It's all right," Terra said. She and Celes were both smiling, and he felt an ache. Celes looked happy, and while he didn't quite understand this sudden flowering of friendship between the two, he could make some guesses. Perhaps they'd known each other before. If nothing else, they had past Imperial service in common, and magic. And the danger to Terra that they were all now realizing was enough to break down some barriers, make a person realize what was important before it was too late. It was enough to make him want to take the girl aside and tell her how it had haunted him that he'd lost his grip on her arm as the world broke, how much it had meant to him to so much as mention Daryl to her. She didn't fascinate him like Celes did, but she was alive, and right now, she was happy, and she should stay that way.

"Locke and I were going to retrieve some drinks and then leave you in peace. Would either of you care for any?"

"Nothing right now," Celes said. Terra was already shaking her head.

"I'd like some brandy," Locke said. Setzer filled a snifter and passed it to the thief, then poured some wine for himself. They withdrew to the upper level, where Setzer's story about Maria became, inevitably, about Daryl, and Locke filled in the bits and pieces Setzer had heard about Rachel - the courtship, the accident, the amnesia, the disaster. Odd, he thought, to realize after all this time how much they had in common. At some point, he heard footsteps below, and he trusted Celes had taken some food from the galley.

They'd moved on to their travels when Cyan descended the ladder, fresh snow in his hair.

"Is it coming down again?" Locke asked.

"Indeed. At least it did not begin until I had safely disposed of the cart." The samurai blew into his cupped hands to warm them. "How late is it? By the sound of it, the whole ship is abed."

"Not too late. People are just quiet," Locke replied.

"A drink?" Setzer offered. "I have wine, brandy... no sake, I'm afraid, but I do have shochu."

The older man's face brightened. "This is excellent news."

Setzer led the way downstairs. "Excellent. I won it, years ago, and counted it lucky it survived the disaster, so I took it from my old cellar in Jidoor, but I'm afraid it's not much to my taste."

"I hope you brought enough for everybody," Locke, bringing up the rear, needled him.

"You want shochu?"

"I'm not averse to trying it."

"Anyone else?" he asked the room at large.

"By now, yes. A glass of wine?" Celes said. "I trust your taste."

Terra looked doubtful. "Something sweet?"

"I shall do my best," he said, with a bow in their direction. Terra giggled. Mog, curled up against her side, stirred in his sleep, grunted, and covered his face with one stubby arm.

"I forgot something," Locke said, and dashed upstairs. A moment later, as Setzer was delivering glasses of wine to the ladies, he returned with his arms full of the parcels he'd had upstairs. He dumped them on a table and pulled out one of the largest. "Celes, this is for you," he said, offering it to her. "We didn't get something for everyone, but Terra and I figured you needed this."

Setzer poured his own wine as Celes set her glass aside to unwrap the package. As she unfolded the cloth inside, she began laughing. "A coat? Did Setzer give me away?"

"Only well after the purchases had been made, and only to Locke!" he defended himself.

"Why? What happened?" Terra asked her.

"She went out alone to clear her head and spent so long at it she nearly froze," Setzer summarized for Cyan in an undertone, as Celes began an explanation full of turns of phrase like "worrying for nothing," and "perfectly fine."

"I can sympathize with the impulse," the knight said.

"But you could still do some damage to yourself!" Terra was protesting, and Locke turned in their direction, seconding the warning.

"But I _didn't,_" Celes insisted. "The only danger I've been in all day is that I'd forget to eat."

"I want wine too!" Relm piped up, from the nook where she'd been drawing, unnoticed.

"You're too young," Terra retorted, automatically.

"Am NOT."

"A sip should not harm a child," Cyan offered.

"Perhaps a toast?" Setzer suggested to Celes, hoping despite all his past experience that ignoring the girl would make her go away.

"If you think you can make it heard..."

"You know what?" Locke said. "Cyan's right. Have a sip of this, Relm."

She eyed it suspiciously. "This is a trick."

"Just take a sip."

She took the glass, stared at it for a moment, brought it slowly to her lips, and then her eyes widened as she smelled it. "Okay, fine, I'll take that spiced apple juice I had yesterday."

"Thought so," Locke said with a smirk, reaching for it. She looked at him, considered, and took a sip. Setzer poured a tumbler full of juice for her as he waited for the coughing and incoherent yelling to subside.

"So... how do people toast?" Relm asked, sounding for all the world like someone who hadn't just accused Locke of poisoning her. "Is this where I pull out the explosives?"

"Explosives?" Locke repeated with some alarm.

"Setting aside the young lady's taste for destruction... we drink to something we can value. "

"Defeating Kefka?" Cyan offered.

"Do I have to stand?" Terra asked. "I don't want to disturb Mog."

"No need," Setzer assured her.

"To hope," Celes suggested.

"Hope is good," Locke agreed.

"To hope." Setzer repeated. "To longer, brighter, warmer days ahead for all of us." Glasses clinked, each of them stretching to reach Terra's outstretched glass, Relm standing on tiptoes to make sure no one missed her, and they each drank.

"This is good!" Terra remarked, sounding surprised, and he laughed.

"That was the idea. I'm glad you like it."

"No but really," Relm persisted, "I've read about it, these explosive things filled with toys and things-"

"Oh, crackers!" Locke said. "Why didn't you say so? I haven't pulled a Yule cracker in years."

"That's a weird word for them. They do explode, right?"

Setzer sipped his wine and watched them all. Gau stirred, stretched, and then bounded out of his chair to hug Cyan. Relm returned to her sketchbook, her drink already forgotten. Locke perched on the arm of the couch; he seemed to be asking Celes about the cold. Terra took another thoughtful sip of the wine and caught his eye; she, too, was watching them all. He wondered what she was thinking, how it must feel to learn what she'd learned today, and not to even have the certainty of a diagnosis or a sentence, just a looming fear. She smiled, though, and then turned to Celes, who'd said something he didn't catch. Setzer turned toward one of the portholes, and saw only his own reflection.

This wasn't a holiday to him, or the night before one, and he didn't see why the longest night of the year was any more important than the second-longest. But it was a long, dark, cold night, in a dangerous world, and all too soon he'd out in it again, flying through cold, dark, and likely wet skies. Tonight, though, he was warm and dry and surrounded by friends who'd all put their troubles aside for a time, as best they could. He had Daryl's memory at his side - poor substitute for the woman herself, but better than never having known her - and he was quite certain now that she'd be nothing but pleased to have her ship back in the air. And while she'd never have taken on so many passengers herself, he was also sure that she'd be glad that everyone within it was, right now, happy.


End file.
